Emergence
by NNWest
Summary: Jack and Gwen investigate mysterious deaths in North Wales. Torchwood speculative fic, written pre Torchwood Ep 1, AU. Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper.
1. Chapter 1, Part 1

_TITLE: Emergence_

_AUTHOR: NNWest_

_DISCLAIMER: Sadly, none of them are mine...but I like playing with them._

_AN: This story is complete speculation, written before Torchwood ep 1 aired, and is already AU based on the few series spoilers we've seen. I wanted to get it out before I get 'Russelled' any futher._

_Much thanks to my betas LJ's darkaegis and wendymr, with supporting credit going to lablackey and ponygirl72!_

* * *

**Chapter 1, Part 1**

Former Detective Chief Inspector Gwen Cooper snapped her eyes and the manila folder on the desk in front of her closed, sickened not by the grisly photograph contained within the file, but by the image conjured in her head by it. In fact, her mental image actually bore very little resemblance to its trigger aside from some of the damage done to the corpse's throat and jaw.

_Jacob. God, who knew there could be so much blood?_

She drew a calming breath and held it, releasing it slowly after a moment, carefully and completely banishing the vision from her mind's eye. It had been nearly three years since she had witnessed Jacob's death, but she could still remember every detail of the scene as she'd found it, remember the heat of his lifeblood on her hands, the pounding of her own heart as she attempted the impossible and tried to staunch the bleeding.

When she opened her eyes, she found Jack Harkness standing at the edge of her desk, the usual glimmer of amused mirth in his expression dampened by what looked to be concern. He'd seen her reaction. "That bad?" he ventured in his flat American tones.

The decision to lie to him warred inside her. To answer yes would be to risk appearing weak. She certainly hadn't fought her way up through the ranks to be looked down on as a weak-stomached woman, to be seen as someone who got queasy over a coroner's report. She'd worked homicide investigation, damn it. Or to answer no and have to explain the severity of her reaction. To have to talk about the death of DI Jacob Daniels and deal with the awkwardness such things create.

Then she had to remind herself where she was and who was asking. She didn't work for the police any more. There was no one here to rail against, no one who exhibited any desire to shield her or keep her from taking on even the most horrific cases. Certainly not Jack. And, though he was technically her superior and director of Torchwood's Cardiff office, Jack went out of his way not to make her feel that way. Not that he was a push-over by any stretch of the imagination. She'd seen that firsthand. When warranted, there was no question he held final authority. Besides, there was the fact that Jack seemed to be able to spot an untruth half a mile away, and she knew it would take a much better liar than her to stand a chance of pulling it off.

In the end, Gwen opted for neither response, sliding the file away from her as she rose from her chair. "I need a coffee. You?" It came off too glibly to her ears, but she covered it by pulling open the desk drawer to root though the stash of change that invariably collected there.

Jack lifted a vaguely sceptical eyebrow, but let the non-answer pass, smiling and shaking his head in reply to her question to him. "No, thanks. Mind if I look while you're gone?" She paused in her coin search, granting her leave with a wave of her hand, and he flipped open the file to leaf through it. He grimaced when he reached the picture that had disturbed her. Whether that was his natural reaction or whether he did it for her benefit, she couldn't be sure.

Triumphant in her scavenging, she picked up her empty mug and headed in the direction of the office coffee pot. "Back in a mo', then."

"Yeah," was his already preoccupied reply as he absorbed the case details.

In the five minutes needed for her to drain the mostly empty pot and set a new one brewing, Jack had taken over her chair. As she let her eye linger for an infinitesimal second too long on the graceful curve of his body as he read, she noticed he was drawing another's attention as well. Elizabeth, who had the desk next to hers, studied him over the plane of her monitor.

She gave a wry smirk when Gwen caught her eye. "Gorgeous," she mouthed.

Shaking her head as she felt her own smirk try to tug at her lips, she mouthed back, "Stopping right there."

The other woman shot back a theatrical pout, but disappeared behind her monitor. Despite being happily married, Elizabeth amused herself by, as she put it, shopping for future ex-husbands. And as soon as Jack made his way back to his office, Gwen was sure she would be ready to update her on their boss's current ranking on the ex-husbands candidate list. But right now they didn't need Jack looking up and realising the scrutiny he had garnered, either.

She would admit there was something about the man that just exuded sex. Her first sight of him--leaned back, stretched like a cat, his feet propped on the desk in the little back office of the tourist shop the organisation ran as a front upstairs--had set her imagination running. Dark hair and piercing blue eyes, he was dashingly handsome in a too smooth sort of way and bewitchingly charming to boot, like he'd just stepped off a television set. Like if you looked around, you'd find his entourage of scriptwriters and lighting technicians lurking behind a camera crew somewhere.

Years of being a cop and a cynic had led her to write him off right then as too good to be true and very probably gay. But he had no want of admirers, whether he knew it or not. It wasn't only Elizabeth in his thrall. Productivity had to take a nosedive him every time he set foot out of his office, to judge from the way the eyes followed him. Rumour even had it that one of the junior techs downstairs in a drunken moment had declared that, if anyone could make him give up his allegiance to heterosexuality, it was Jack Harkness.

Yet now that she'd been working closely with him for a few months, she also knew him to be extremely intelligent and perceptive, as well as an incurable flirt. That captivating charm was his weapon. He put people at ease around him and used that ease to get what he wanted. And to get around revealing too much about himself, she'd noticed. When he couldn't escape a direct question, half-truths and evasions did the job. That tendency alone made the cop in her want slam him against an interrogation room wall simply to see what she could get him to confess to. She firmly refused to contemplate that the urge might also have something to do with her still running imagination.

Jack looked up then. "I think you might've found something here."

She moved around to read the case summary sheet. "You mean, you did," Gwen pointed out. "I'd not got round to reading it yet."

He shrugged with a good-natured smile. "Found it on your desk, you get the credit."

"Brilliant. And have I won some fabulous prize?" Somehow she suspected fieldwork was coming her way, which wouldn't be bad if it was in the city. But the likelihood of that was nil as the file that had arrested Jack's attention had come from the North Wales Police.

"A trip to scenic..." He flipped back a page to point to the location information, and without a trace of irony, finished, "Denbighshire." Which was, as expected, nowhere near Cardiff.

"Oh, sounds lovely," Gwen answered with only a small note of sarcasm. "Well then, Mr. Harkness, I suppose you should fill me in on exactly what it is I've found."

"Little under a month ago, hiker--a local--found dead on the moor. Three days exposure to the elements didn't leave much to go on. Death was listed as natural causes. Damage to the body--as I think you saw before, the guy's jaw was torn off and his throat ripped open--listed as post-mortem animal attack." He didn't produce the photo, but she could visualise it well enough.

She felt his eyes on her, studying her reaction, but the spectre of her slain partner stayed silent this time. So, if he was looking for anything more than a simple confirmation, she disappointed him. "Probably no real investigation carried out, then. Hikers get themselves into trouble on the moors all the time." She was about to ask him why he found the case so interesting when something clicked in her mind.

Denbighshire. A hiker dead on the moor in Denbighshire. She'd just seen that in one of the other case files she'd reviewed. Gwen set down the mug to sort through the pile of files on her desk. Opening folders and scanning summary sheets, she asked, "Denbighshire where?"

The third file down held what she was looking for.

oOoOo

He had to move out of Gwen's way as she shuffled papers on her disorganised desk in her search. Whatever had bothered her about the case earlier showed no signs of reappearing.

He glanced at the sheet under his hand again to answer her question. "Couple of miles east of Llangynhafal."

"You didn't even stumble over that," she praised him distractedly.

Not so difficult when planet names like Raxacoricofallapatorius used to be part of his everyday vocabulary--both before and after travelling with the enigmatic alien who would only name himself as the Doctor. But it'd taken him longer than usual to get an ear for the Welsh lilt in this century. It seemed having everything he heard instantly converted to his native Colonial Standard by the TARDIS translator had dulled the linguistic edge he'd honed conning his way across the galaxy, and he still very occasionally got socked in the arm for misunderstanding Gwen's English when she was in a pique. And as troublesome as the accent was, the Welsh language itself proved itself to be something of a nuisance for him as well--its over-affinity with consonants was only one problem.

"Here it is." She laid the folder in her hands down in front of him. "Another one, same area, dated four days before. No visible damage to this one other than what could be explained by two days post-mortem exposure to the elements. Autopsy ruling was sudden cardiac arrest."

Jack looked over the details of the new file. She was right. The details were surprisingly similar. "Twenty-six. Kinda young for a heart attack." The century was a bit backward, but medical science was better than that, wasn't it? He was still getting used to what could be done here and what had yet to be invented.

She shrugged. "Stranger things have happened. See it a lot on the beat with druggies."

"And why is it the local authorities didn't seem to notice the similarities here? Less than a week separates the incidents."

Gwen slid the top folder to the side. "Here. Different investigating officers. The one usually assigned to the ward must have been absent for some reason. And as I said, people get careless and get themselves into trouble on the moors all the time."

Her brown-eyed gaze and full attention came to rest squarely upon him. "So I find myself asking, what's _our_ interest in these cases?"

Jack found himself grinning up at her. Curious and clever, he knew he made the right choice in recruiting her. "Call it a hunch?" he teased.

The set of her mouth as she continued to regard him stonily told him she wasn't going to play. "You've got more evidence than that. And if you're thinking of sending me to Llangynhafal on a weekend, you're going to spill." Clever and could see right through him a startling amount of the time.

He stood up from her chair and gathered the two folders. Tipping his head in the direction of his office as an indication for her to follow, he led her across the floor.

They stepped into the office and he pushed the door shut behind them, blocking out the noise from the floor outside. "Call it I've got another report that came through on the wire this morning--the possibility of two missing persons last seen in the same area," he said as he crossed to the desk and unlocked the terminal. "Add to that these two bodies and Skywatch's report of a good-sized meteor over the area a little over four weeks ago--"

"And you've got evidence enough to warrant a look-see," she finished, coming around to read over his shoulder as he closed the policy change proposal he'd been fiddling with the wording on for a week now and opened the email he'd received earlier from a contact in the North Wales Police.

"The missing persons report isn't official yet. Enough time hasn't elapsed. I want to get out there and make sure we're only being paranoid before the local police get it in their heads to do a full-scale search of the area and more people wind up mysteriously dead. Or worse, they offend whatever might be out there and it escalates into more than our negotiators can fix." He seriously hoped there was nothing in Denbighshire to find.

"Hey, I only took the job here because I thought I got to be the cynic. But _you_ want to get out there?" She seemed surprised by that. Surely it hadn't been that long since he'd escaped the office and done any fieldwork. Jack was astounded to realise that was exactly the case as far as his staff beyond the guy in motorpool and Price in tech downstairs knew. The truth was he was in the field most weekends or whenever the paper-bound drudgery of his directorship would let him go, off for a private look into this or that, or whatever had caught his attention from the information that crossed his desk. Checking out situations that might turn out to be something worth worrying about, things he might need to send his team after or things that were best handled by his own experience and training.

And before Gwen had produced those two bodies, he'd been ready to head out there on his own for a cursory check on the weight of the missing persons and Skywatch reports alone. He had a vehicle and everything he needed reserved already. Now with her coming with him, he'd finally get the opportunity to see in person what her glowing service record and the field reports of others told him. Everything he'd seen of Gwen Cooper so far told him she was the best candidate for his purposes. Sooner or later, through one circumstance or another, he would have to leave Torchwood, leave Cardiff and probably even the twenty-first century if the Time Agency caught up with him, and right now he had Gwen pegged as his replacement.

"That fabulous prize I mentioned earlier..."

"My expenses-paid trip to the country?" Gwen deadpanned.

"That's the one." He smiled wryly and dropped his voice into the playfully seductive register that melted hearts and obliterated obstacles--usually. "What would you say if I told you you got to take me along?"

She regarded him evenly for a long moment. "I'd say you're driving and I get to pick the radio station."

oOoOo

In the end, Jack made all the arrangements and she'd agreed to let him pick her up from her flat at six the next morning. Five minutes to, as she was yawning over the news headlines pouring out of some overly cheerful talking head, he tapped at her door.

She flipped off the television and slung her bag over her shoulder. "I'm off," she called in the general direction of the bedroom as she unfastened the door latch and tugged it open. Before she could say a word of greeting to Jack, he shoved a tall paper coffee cup under her nose and she accepted it gratefully. Sipping from it--latte, and still hot--she sighed contentedly. "Oh, that's lovely. Thanks."

He was smothering a laugh; she had to admire his survival instincts. "My pleasure," he assured her, smiling in amusement.

"It will be when this"--she lifted the cup--"hits my bloodstream." Turning, she caught sight of Grant shambling sleepily into the lounge to see her off. "Grant, this is Jack Harkness. Jack, my boyfriend, Grant Butler."

Jack grinned brightly in response to Grant's uncoordinated half-wave. "Grant, good to meet you. Sorry to drag you out of bed at this hour and sorry we don't have more time to get to know each other. Here, Gwen," he said, putting out a hand, "give me your bag and I'll meet you downstairs."

She complied. "Thanks. Be there in a tick." And he was off.

Grant came over and wrapped his arms around her. He was still warm and she longed to follow him back to bed and crawl back in with him. "Kill that morning person for me, will you? We can't let them breed," he mumbled into her hair.

Smiling faintly at his joke, Gwen kissed him. "Jack's not all that bad. He brought me coffee."

Grant smiled then too, coffee being one of the essentials in his estimation as well. "I suppose we can let him off with a maiming, this time. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'll call or have the office get in touch if something changes. I'll try to ring tonight." One last kiss and she left the flat.

Outside, Jack was propped against the front end of one of Torchwood's black Range Rovers, looking like a casualwear advert in the burgeoning morning light, and she was unsurprised to find he looked just as good in jeans as he did around the office.

"He's cute in a half-conscious sort of way," he said, pulling open the passenger door for her. But then, as far as she could tell, there weren't many people who didn't meet Jack's criteria for 'cute', 'sexy', or 'interesting'. And she was still working out the lexicon as to what each of those classifications actually meant to him.

"He wants you dead."

It was an effort not to laugh at Jack's immediate incredulity. "Wha-- why?" The man was clearly used to being instantly adored, or at least liked, which, of course, made ribbing him even more fun. "I didn't even say anything," he complained. "And believe me, the things I could've..."

It was a sign the caffeine was beginning to work as she wondered just how many times he'd been in trouble because of what he failed not to say. She suspected the instances far outnumbered the stars in the heavens. "Yes, but you were chipper while you were not saying it."

"Tough audience." Checking she was settled, he thumped the door shut and circled to the driver's side. Climbing into his own seat, he picked up where he left off. "If I ever try to get the pair of you into bed, remind me this is the morning after I'd have to look forward to."

"That assumes that you had a chance of a night before."

He chuckled and started the engine. Before the stereo's CD player had a chance to spin up and produce a single note, he reached across, jabbing the player's eject button. "As requested, radio duty's all yours," he told her, discarding the disc onto a leather CD wallet on the floor.

Gwen picked up the wallet and the CD--a home-burned disc labelled, _This week's lesson_--and slotted it into an empty space. "This week's lesson?" she asked, idly flipping through the other discs--show tunes, big band and swing, Glenn Miller, Sinatra, Cole Porter. Musically speaking, Jack and her grandmother would have a grand time together.

"That's just Price--you've met Angela down in tech, right?" Street traffic was light enough this early on a Saturday that he spared her a glance as she nodded. She'd met Angela Price in passing fairly early on, but didn't know much about her. Jack laughed at some private joke and added, "She's trying to fix what she calls my antiquated taste in music."

She smirked. "Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but I think my gran has most of these on original, very old vinyl."

Jack grinned suddenly, cocking an eyebrow and adding a layer of devilishness to his dashing features. "I like her already--"

The thought of Jack flirting with her gran was too much, so she cut across him with, "No, Jack, you can't have my gran, either," and consoled herself with the idea that, if Jack ever got the chance, the sharp old lady would shoot him down as quickly as Gwen herself had.

He was unfazed, his grin untarnished. "So anytime I go down there, she's got a new CD for me."

"And this one was?"

"Thrash metal."

Gwen blinked, momentarily caught out by the incongruity of that detail and its relation to the white-haired Torchwood techie. "Thrash metal? Loud, fast, driving, speeding-ticket-inducing thrash metal?" He glanced over to her with a smug smile and a nod, and she recovered from her astonishment. "Huh," was the only thing she could think of to say and went back to perusing the wallet, noticing a few more of Angela's contributions tucked into the back, these more helpfully marked with genres. In the end she found one labelled _1980's Rock_ and pulled it, slotting it into the player.

Several long, wordless minutes passed as Jack threaded their way out of Cardiff and through the northern outskirts of the city while Gwen let the ride and the cityscape sliding by outside her window lull her, her mind drifting in sleepy nostalgic memories of her teen years courtesy of Angela's eighties mix.

Without preamble, Jack asked, "Hey, gone back to sleep on me yet?" He'd said it softly; if she'd really been asleep, he wouldn't have woken her.

"Nope, still here." She roused herself and straightened herself in the seat.

"Do me a favour and look back there for the map." He tossed a thumb over his shoulder and she looked into the back seat. "I think I'm supposed to be looking for a new road here shortly. Should be a packet of all that stuff in the laptop bag." Gwen found the folder easily and handed it to him, taking the opportunity to pull out the bundle of paperwork she had stowed in the front pocket of her own rucksack that Jack had thoughtfully tossed onto the back seat within her reach. Beyond the seat back in the Range Rover's cargo area, she noticed the three large crates each stencilled with the Torchwood insignia.

Turning back and shuffling through the stack of papers from her bag, she said, "Don't know how much of this will be useful, but Elizabeth put together the topo maps and some local area info for me--"

"Speaking of, how am I doing in Liz's ranking this week?"

She knew she really shouldn't have been surprised by the question. There was no putting anything past the man; why should the fact that he was on Elizabeth's future ex-husbands list be any different? "You know about that, eh?"

He was amused by that. "Who doesn't? The office isn't that big. And it's not as if she hides it." He paused for a second as he found the turning and navigated it. "So?" That one word hinted at impatience. He really was interested.

"Well, at last update, you were between Matthew McConaughey and Colin Firth." Gwen watched him as he appeared to give serious consideration to the information.

"McConaughey and Firth, you say? I used to be in the Jason Statham-Christian Bale range. I'm slipping," he said with a sudden grin and a slightly rueful shake of his head.

Gwen found she had to smile. It was insane, yet somehow she felt as if she should pat his hand and console him over the loss in standing. "The list has had a bit of a shuffle recently. Seems there's this new scifi show on BBC1. She's fairly enamoured with the lead at the moment. Still, the only non-actor on the list isn't bad." Reassurance offered, her curiosity led her back to the transport crates in the back. "What've you got back there?"

He looked to see where she was pointing. "A few of Price's toys. Some caving and climbing gear just in case."

_Climbing gear?_ "What in creation do you expect to find? I thought we were going up to talk to investigating officers, poke around the files they didn't send down, very possibly check out the area where the bodies were found." He had warned her to bring outerwear, but she hadn't expected too much to come of it. "Satisfying paranoia, you said." She couldn't imagine they were going to find anything other than an unusual density of people underestimating the ruthlessness of Mother Nature.

"Satisfy paranoia, sure, and make sure there's nothing to find. I do intend to make a fairly thorough search of the area." She must have appeared concerned because he continued, "Before you worry overly much, I've got the sensing and scanning equipment in. Shouldn't take much more than a few hours to buzz out to Llangynhafal and run the check after we meet with the ward officer in Denbigh. After that, we'll find a good restaurant, have dinner on the company dime and head back to Cardiff bright and early tomorrow morning. All right?"

"All right. Except for that 'early' part." Gwen was somewhat cheered. She felt more confident that Jack had told her all he knew about what they were headed into and what she initially construed as overkill in the back was only him being prepared for something he didn't think was likely to happen either.


	2. Chapter 1, Part 2

**Chapter 1, Part 2**

They talked shop for a while longer, but the conversation eventually wound down and Gwen dozed off for real this time. It amazed him that she could sleep with a large double espresso-laced latte in her system. _Just like Rose_, he mused, trying to ignore the pang of loss that still seeped through him when he thought about her. In comparison, his own need for sleep was significantly less. His fifty-first century origin and genetics had a good deal to do with that, but even for his own century, he'd always managed to get by on a greatly reduced sleep schedule. The other cadets at the Time Agency Academy had always been especially envious of the ability, not to mention it had driven more than one lover up the wall.

All the same, there were still never enough hours in the day. Even now his thoughts wandered back to the other part of his job--not only the job that was expected of him, but the job he knew he had in front of him to ensure the history he knew ran to course.

With the loss of Torchwood's London HQ and the ferociously patriotic Yvonne Hartmann, his responsibilities had increased immensely, and with them, his opportunities to effect change. Previously the director of a relatively underregarded and often forgotten field office, he was now director of the Torchwood Institute's relocated HQ in Cardiff. Overnight, he'd found himself answerable to none but Britain's Royal Family themselves, and in a unique position to shape the organisation's future. He'd been given ultimate control over the medium, namely the Institute's operating policies and procedures, with which to begin the transformation of the clandestine, rabidly nationalistic Torchwood of the present into the Torchwood he knew from the historical records of his time period, the public Torchwood that came from virtually nowhere to become the major player in Earth's exploration of space.

When the United States shuttle programme ended in 2009, it was--will be; he needed to remember when he was--Torchwood, newly internationalised, that quickly became--becomes--the only name in space vehicle contracting. _They've got a lot of growing, and growing up, to do in the next few years._ But he'd already been hard at laying what groundwork he could: new policies mostly, retraining and, when absolutely necessary, removing personnel, recreating the organisation from the bottom up in some places. It'd taken a hefty shove to overcome the inertia of the deeply ingrained shoot first, British Empire forever mentality, but things were finally moving.

Recently, he'd been trying to forge better relations with UNIT-UK. While they'd worked together in the past, the union had always been grudging and tainted by a certain resentfulness on both sides--the mishandling of the Sycorax invasion was the latest example. As far as he'd been able to ascertain, no matter how in tune their objectives might be, any partnership of Torchwood with UNIT always ended up degrading into a pissing match over jurisdiction and authority, and who got to keep the toys.

He'd been triumphant to a point. Currently stashed in with the gear he'd brought along was one United Nations Intelligence Taskforce language translator, the most current database and software patches installed, Torchwood on the books as an official field tester. It helped that he'd offered his own knowledge of alien languages to the project, most of which had been incorporated into this latest database. It helped more that he'd agreed to push through one very special policy change, too--the one he'd been working on for the last week, tinkering with the wording, writing and rewriting sections of it, unsure whether he was just trying to get it right or whether he was trying to come to terms with his own feelings on the subject of the change: the amendment to the Institute's original charter to remove the Doctor from the scope of their investigations.

Evidently he'd been on UNIT's payroll for quite some time during the 1960's and 70's and they still held a rather strong loyalty to the guy. Jack could understand that, even if he was hard pressed to muster the same emotion within himself any more. Personally, his own feeling toward the man was one of ambivalence. He knew firsthand how astoundingly good the Doctor was at fostering that sort of loyalty, how terrifyingly easy it was to be drawn into the orbit of the star that was the Time Lord. And he knew the pain of being torn away from that star and left behind. UNIT was only out to protect their own and the fact that Torchwood had the Doctor listed as an enemy of the nation had to rankle more than a little.

UNIT's defence of their wayward charge wasn't the only factor in the matter. To achieve what it needed to, Torchwood could not waste its efforts obsessively tracking one alien who, Jack grudgingly admitted, typically did plenty more good for the country--hell, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy--and its populace than harm. There were many other more important endeavours the organisation could put its resources into.

Jack was pretty confident that pushing through the policy change regarding the Doctor would present little challenge. He had a fairly impressive case built and Yvonne's Ghost Shift insanity only added support to it.

Of course, _he'd_ been there to save the planet's bacon when Yvonne had done everything she could to push the envelope and invite disaster on a cosmic scale. Torchwood had finally caught the Doctor, not through any great strategy or carefully conceived attack, but because they were stupid and arrogant enough to create a problem so massive that the Doctor couldn't help but notice it. Pushing at the very fabric of space-time until it shattered. Aiding an invasion force--albeit unwittingly--to cross over from an alternate universe. And harbouring another, the Daleks--again, unwittingly.

He shuddered at the thought, but more so at the memory it evoked of the last battle he'd fought by the Doctor's side, at staring down the Dalek gun aimed at him and the blackness.

In the weeks after, Jack had pored over what little documentation there was about the incident, gathering every scrap he could find, but the picture remained unpleasantly incomplete. Had they not had their own troubles protecting the rift in Cardiff from the invading Cybermen, he would have been at Torchwood Tower himself the moment he heard the Institute had the Doctor in their hands.

Nevertheless, despite the horrors he'd faced that day, the most distressing element of it crossed his desk a few weeks later. It was the list of missing-presumed dead. Rose Tyler was on it.

For good or for ill, to maintain his sanity, he'd convinced himself that she wasn't really dead. She couldn't be. She was missing; obviously that meant she had to be with the Doctor. Worryingly, the list had also contained one Jacqueline Tyler, Rose's mom, and one Mickey Smith, Rose's ex-boyfriend. Surveillance video put them both at Torchwood Tower that day. Though he hadn't met Jackie, he'd met Mickey once. Nice enough guy, but a bit wet, in Jack's opinion. In the Doctor's, too. Jack couldn't imagine the Doctor letting him or Rose's mother aboard the TARDIS to travel, so what were they doing with him at the Tower?

Based on that evidence, he'd formulated a plausible hypothesis, one that allowed him to ignore probability and left him at peace enough to rest at night. One that allowed him to continue to deny the possibility that the beautiful, caring woman that he couldn't get out of his head might be dead. The only explanation had to be that Torchwood had got too close, that they'd figured out who Rose was and tried to get at the Doctor through her family. There was no way the Doctor would stand for something like that, but he wouldn't leave innocents in danger either. Jackie and Mickey were only missing. Like Rose's case, no bodies had turned up. Jack wanted to believe that the Doctor had removed Mickey and Jackie from Torchwood's grasp and set them up with a new life someplace else. A kind of witness protection. Catastrophes like the Ghost Shift invasion were custom-tailored for just that sort of disappearance. He should know; he'd staged a few for himself.

Gwen stirred in her sleep, sweeping aside the raven's wing of hair that had settled across her face as she surfaced drowsily for a moment to enquire where they were and if he wanted to swap drivers. He slipped on a smile for her. He estimated less than two hours to Denbigh and told her he was good. She nodded and searched briefly for a more comfortable position in the leather seat before dropping off again.

He doubted that they'd find out anything they didn't already know and, had he kept the case to himself, he would have skipped interviewing Clarkson and the other officers out of Denbigh Station altogether, but Gwen had set up the appointment. She was a fine investigator in her own right. He'd give her some leeway to approach it in her own style. And even if they didn't get any new intel, they'd at least have a chance to convince the inspector to hold off on the police's manhunt until he and Gwen had had their look.

oOoOo

Summoned by the station reception officer on duty, Inspector Chris Clarkson met them and, after introductions were exchanged, ushered them to small meeting room near the back of the station. Fortyish, Clarkson's build was slightly doughy in the middle, but there was a trimness about the rest of him that served as evidence that this was a recent change. And certain amount of fatigue showed as dark circles under the inspector's sharp green eyes.

He was nervous, too, but Jack could easily mark the cause of that down to their visit. They'd introduced themselves as agents of Torchwood--another effort to legitimise the organisation and bring it out of the cloak and dagger realm--and associated the Institute with the security services. If Clarkson ever _had_ heard of Torchwood before this, Jack was sure it was probably in the whispered context of black-ops and perceived troublemakers vanishing without a trace. In light of that, he did his best to look harmless, hoping Gwen would do the same--no need to scare the guy unduly. They weren't here to shake things up, and the inspector was looking harried already.

Settling into one of the chairs around the laminate conference room table, he sought to reassure Clarkson. "Relax; this visit is nothing to worry about. Just a little courtesy call so you know we're poking around on your turf. We're interested in two deaths that occurred near Llangynhafal."

The inspector relaxed some. "Of course, I know just the ones, but why would the security services be concerned?"

Gwen gave him a faint but kindly smile. "We're not at liberty to discuss that at this time."

Clarkson was instantly chagrined. "Oh, yes. Of course," he acquiesced, apologetic. _And I thought the Cardiff police force rolled over easy_, Jack thought, _except the woman I stole away from them, that is._

"We're already familiar with the official reports, but getting a local perspective is often very helpful," Gwen explained from her seat to his left.

Clarkson, across the table, nodded his understanding as he folded his hands in front of him.

Gwen checked the file she had with her, likely more for show than a need to look anything up, as she took the opportunity to organise her thoughts. "You're inspector for the ward, but you weren't the investigating officer for either of these cases?"

"I was on leave." He smiled, a mixture of pride and timidity. "My missus had a baby--a son." That explained the fatigue. The poor guy wasn't sleeping through the night yet.

Jack offered the obligatory congratulations with a wide grin, silently thanking whatever deities were listening at the time that it wasn't him. "Your first?" he asked.

With a vigorous nod, Clarkson responded, "Ta. It's been a learning experience, that's for certain."

Gwen's kindly smile was back as she steered the inspector back onto track. The piercing look Jack received let him know she'd thank him not to derail the conversation too badly. "So tell us about the area. I'm going to guess things don't often stack up like this."

"Never! The whole place is usually quiet as can be--farms mostly. Only troubles round here are poaching, kids and the odd rowdy tourist. Dean dying and that other poor bloke in the same week, it's unheard of. Still coroner didn't find anything amiss in either of 'em."

"You knew Dean Longden?" Gwen enquired.

"In passing. He was a member of the local caving club. Usually lent his help whenever we had a tourist go missing--like we've got those two suspected missing right now. They sometimes get themselves in a scrape down in one of the old mines. Dean'd go round and check for us."

Jack perked up a little. "Heard about that, actually. Any more news?" He'd been hoping that those two would have turned up. Now he wanted to know how much time he and Gwen had before the search began in earnest.

Clarkson shook his head, frowning. "No. We had a quick look around the area they were headed to--right near where Dean and the other bloke were found coincidentally--after the call came in from Mrs Barger--she runs the B&B in Llanrhaeadr. The two missing are her lodgers. If there's still no word by this evening, we'll begin a search and start an official investigation. In most cases like these, we find that they turn up again within forty-eight hours after having decided to take an unscheduled day-trip someplace."

Gwen nodded knowingly as if she'd dealt with similar situations. "So the bodies were found in the same general location. And your tourists were headed out there as well." Spying a local area map on the pinboard near the door, she gestured to it, rising from her chair as she did. She unpinned the map and brought it to the table. "Can you show me here where exactly we're talking?"

Clarkson rose, too, getting a better look by leaning over the map. "Aye." A second's searching to orient himself, and the inspector pointed. "Dean and Roger Nelms were found here. The GPS co-ordinates are noted in the file," he told them. Michael Westman and Douglas Matheson--Mrs Barger's missing lodgers--said they were going out to the mine just here." His finger slid a very short distance and he looked up at them. "Less than half a mile, I think."

Gwen's expression turned thoughtful. "The mine? More cavers, then?"

"Seems so."

"Longden and Nelms were both found out in the open, correct? Dean hadn't been out at the mine?"

"We can assume not. He didn't have his gear with him. Anyway, he seemed the type who was smart enough not to do any serious exploration without a partner and backup. No, from what I've been told, he was only out walking."

At Gwen's request, Clarkson dutifully rounded up the officers that had filed the Longden and Nelms case reports. Seeing no need to interfere, Jack let her continue to run the interview, very occasionally putting in a question of his own. While Time Agency methods bore some similarity to those of this era's police, this was her show to run. She was on home ground here--her profession, her country, her time zone--and she was proving she was a pro. When she finished her cross-examination of the investigating officers, Jack was no more or less reassured about what might be lurking out on the moor, but with so much talk centred around the mine Clarkson mentioned, he was beginning to think the wild idea of throwing in the climbing gear might not be so wild after all.

Finally, Gwen exhausted her line of enquiry, much to Clarkson's, and his own, relief. She was thorough, and she was good, he'd give her that. Regardless, he was glad that she didn't give the poor inspector or the other officers too hard of a time, but just from this session, he could tell he never wanted to experience a serious grilling from her. _Thank goodness she's on our side._

Standing, he shook the inspector's hand. "Thank you, Inspector Clarkson. I hope you don't mind if we go up and poke around for ourselves a bit."

"Not at all," he said, shaking Gwen's hand as well. "If you wanted, I could accompany you, though I'm not sure what you expect to find." Somehow Jack couldn't quite believe that the offer was anything more than Clarkson being polite. His initial unease hadn't completely faded.

Jack grinned at the man. "I'm not sure we know either. But I don't think we need to trouble you further by dragging you out there. Tell you what, if we have any further questions, we'll give you a call?"

Clarkson appeared to be moderately relieved by that answer. "Certainly. You have the number." With one last enquiry about the best place for lunch and another round of thanks, they left the inspector to return to his duties.

oOoOo

The day that had promised to be crisp and sunny in Cardiff had turned to something decidedly cloudy by their journey north. Though rain didn't appear to be a threat, the cloud cover was thick enough that the ruggedised Army GPS receiver--the PLGR; for some reason, Jack insisted on using the silly official acronym and it was beginning to stick--had taken longer than usual to acquire. Even without rain, the leaden weight of the PLGR in her hand and the climbing gear and computer in the rucksack on her back were doing their best to drain any pleasure out of the hike. They'd had to leave the Range Rover behind and walk in and, by extension, pack in any equipment they might need.

That Jack kept forgetting the length of his legs in comparison to hers didn't help matters. He'd get caught up in the story he was telling and end up outpacing her by a fair distance before he remembered himself to drift back to keep pace with her. In all she was finding the whole experience wearing and was glad Jack seemed content to talk for both of them.

Though she did have to marvel at the way he could carry on so blithely, telling stories, and he still managed not to give away anything personal about himself. Listening, she realised that most of his stories, the ones about events she didn't witness herself, had a sanitised feel about them. No surnames and no real location information. She didn't doubt that everything he'd related had actually happened, a little exaggeration in places notwithstanding--really, _fifteen_ of them...naked. Still, there remained the perception that someone had tripped through Jack's past life with a thick black marker and censored all the details.

Yet again she had to wonder who he was, where he came from. On their drive to Denbigh, she'd caught a glimpse of another Jack, a weary, brooding, pained Jack. Wrapped in his private thoughts, it had taken him a few seconds to notice she was awake. In that moment she was given an unguarded view of a man steeped in bone-deep sadness. He'd been hurt, deeply, and not very long ago, she guessed. It broke her heart to see that the man she'd thought to be so alive, so full of energy, was so radically different, so broken. She'd been torn as to whether to offer a consoling hand, but then he smiled his bright smile and the moment was gone, the mask he showed the world back in place.

Relief flowed through her when the PLGR finally registered that they were close to the crime scene co-ordinates. She let Jack know that they were getting close, pointing out the marker she spotted in the distance.

As they approached, a length of bright yellow barrier tape fluttered from an anonymous stake, the only visible remnant of the investigation into Longen's death. Not far away, somewhat hidden behind a rise in the rocky, scrubby landscape, a similar stake marked the place where Nelm's body had been found.

"They _were_ close," she said. She estimated less than 150 yards separated the two sites as she absently stowed the PLGR in her rucksack.

Jack swore. Gwen was pretty sure that was what it was. She didn't catch the words--she couldn't even be sure they were English--but the tone and inflection was definitely one of abrupt annoyance and the mildly guilty glance he sent her way confirmed the suspicion that he'd said something he knew shouldn't have.

"What've you got?" He was messing with the wide cuff on his right wrist that until now had been hidden by sleeve of his canvas jacket. She came to stand near him trying to see what he was looking at, but before she got a good look, he tugged his sleeve down. _Another Harkness mystery_, she noted. Hurriedly, he shrugged out of his pack and crouched to paw through it.

"Tell you in second," he replied, distracted by his efforts to pull what she recognised as a scanning device, the technical details of which she could never remember, from the rucksack. She knew Jack could rattle them off without a thought. Probably based on some sort of advanced alien technology. Which one specifically wasn't her department to know; they had Toshiko Sato for that.

Whatever he had found, Jack wasn't quite shaken, but he wasn't at all happy about it. When she had donned her Glock back at the Range Rover while they were gearing up, the measure had felt extreme for a trek through the countryside. The pistol's weight at her hip was suddenly a welcome reassurance.

Half a minute passed as he wrangled with the scanner, his expression growing more and more serious, her anxiety growing to block out her earlier frustration. Jack finally looked up from the device's display and focused his intent gaze on the horizon beyond the second crime scene marker.

She followed his gaze, but there was nothing there to see, nothing but the meeting of grey sky and gnarled grey-green land. "What is it, Jack? What did you find?"

His voice grim, he answered, "I found our killer."


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"There's nothing there." Gwen's eyes lingered on the seemingly barren horizon where his wristcomputer had detected, and the scanner had confirmed, the presence of a large mass.

"Nothing you can _see_, but there's definitely something there." Jack showed her the spectrographic scan results.

She took the device from him, studying the display with an air of fascination and trepidation. "What is it?"

"It's a ship."

"It's invisible? Jack Harkness, you're telling me there's an invisible alien ship out there?" She pointed at the ship, or rather at the spot where the ship existed.

"Cloaked, yeah," he explained. Her acquired nonchalance around the office made it easy to forget she was relatively new to dealing with this kind of situation. "And good guess about alien. At least it's not any human design I recognise." Gwen fixed him with a stare. He ignored it. "Of course, it's not any alien design I recognise, either," he admitted, scratching at the back of his head. "I need to get some more readings."

Jack moved to take the scanner back from her, but she resisted, gripping it tightly and refusing to let him take it. "Human?"

"What?"

"You said it wasn't human. How could it be human?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "If it were human, wouldn't it be us, Torchwood, that had it?" She thought of something else. "Not the Americans..."

He shook his head. "No, not the Americans. By the time human technology advances that far, there is no United States--no Britain, either. The majority of the human race won't even live on Earth."

"You're talking about the future." He nodded, beginning to regret what he'd said. "How do you know? You sound pretty certain of it because that sounds like more than simple speculation."

Much as he wanted to, he wasn't going to lie to her. This was the kind of information she needed to know to do this job, but how _he_ had acquired the information was his own business. "Yeah, I am certain of it. And never mind how I know," he told her in a tone designed to end the conversation. Gwen didn't say more, but she maintained her mulish stranglehold on the scanner.

He sighed, kicking himself for the slip. He should have remembered who he was dealing with. With Gwen you couldn't drop things like that and expect them to go unnoticed. Jack addressed her again, softening his stance and his voice into something more reasonable. He was sorry to have snapped at her. It was his mistake, and, true to her profession, she was asking what she thought to be pertinent questions. "Listen, Gwen, what you need to know is that a ship _could_ be human as easily as it could be alien, but it'd have to travel in time to get here. But _this_ one, I'm almost positive, is alien." He paused as she assimilated what he had told her. "Can I have the spectrographic scanner back now?" Her dark gaze remained locked with his for a second longer. "Please?"

The corners of her mouth turned down, but she nodded, satisfied with the answer. "All right." And she let him take it from her hands.

This wasn't over, Jack knew, and he was sure Gwen was diligently filing all of this away for further analysis, the detective she was gathering evidence for the mental file that she was keeping on him. That was dangerous. It was a lot safer for everyone to know as little about his origins and his past as possible.

He calmed himself and walked toward the ship to start a real analysis, keying commands into the scanner as he went. Gwen moved closer, curious, her frustration forgotten or buried. "Talk as you go. I want to learn."

So he did, showing her how to set up each analysis mode, showing her the results and describing what conclusions could be drawn from each result. There didn't seem to be anyone at home aboard the ship. Maintaining a cloak like that consumed a lot of energy and typically blocked a spectrographic scan of the interior. Maintaining the anti-grav cushion the ship rested upon consumed massive amounts of power, too. So, to keep the energy signature the craft generated as small as possible, life support onboard was likely shut down, meaning the occupants were on the surface someplace. He explained all this to Gwen, who absorbed the information assiduously.

It took some time, and in that time, they hadn't been approached or attacked or, as far as Jack could tell, even been noticed. He'd been keeping an eye out for any activity or life signs in the area while they'd been out in the open, his wristcomputer set to warn him of any new energy readings in the immediate area. He also mentioned the lack of interest to Gwen. "Worrying that there's no distress signal either."

"So they're here on purpose," she concluded.

"It's possible," he responded, not ready to make that assumption yet. "Still, best stay on our toes."

She frowned suddenly. "Earlier you said we'd found our killer. But if the aliens aren't home, how did Longden and Nelms die?"

Jack searched the ground for a moment, finding a fair-sized chunk of rock. He tossed it in the air and caught it once. "Watch," he said, and lobbed the stone at the place where the invisible ship hung twenty feet above the ground.

The stone impacted craft's defence screen, a brilliant discharge of arcing electricity crawling back over the skin of the transparent hull away the point of contact. It caused Gwen to grip his arm and flinch away, ready to run or to throw them both to the ground should greater danger present itself. She looked at him, eyes wide, and he looked straight back, answering her question. "They were electrocuted."

He turned, making his way back to the nearest crime scene marker, surveying the terrain as he did. Locating what he was looking for, a large, vaguely trapezoidal depression in the ground, he crouched beside it and beckoned to Gwen. "Here. This is where the ship was sitting." He indicated the indention the landing pylon had left in the earth. Spotting another some distance away, he pointed it out to her. They were easy to see if you knew what to look for. "They probably walked right into it." He shook his head dejectedly. _Of all the dumb, stupid luck, bumping your nose on a lethal, invisible defence grid._

"Now it's moved." Gwen glanced back over her shoulder in the direction of the alien craft.

He nodded to her. "Now you could walk right under it and never know it was there." Jack stood up. "With the deaths and the police activity, they couldn't leave the ship on the ground, but they couldn't keep the anti-grav engines on and still have life support. So, my guess is they parked the ship and have gone to ground someplace--hiding out. But it would have to be nearby," he theorised.

"Gone to ground," she repeated, pensive. "Or gone underground."

He snapped his fingers as he followed her line of thought. "The mine."

She grinned. "The mine."

At least he wasn't carrying around a pack full of climbing apparatus and rope for nothing.

oOoOo

The torch beside her supplied dim but adequate light in the darkness of the cavern. There was still no sign of the missing cavers, Gwen noted as she finished repacking the equipment and electronics she'd had to remove from her rucksack. Nearby, Jack had done the same after unpacking his share of the gear they needed to rappel down the vertical mineshaft.

Since entering the mine they hadn't encountered any evidence of Matheson and Westman's passage. Nor had they seen any sign of the ship's owners, and tension and fear about what they might find had been slowly mounting within her with every empty chamber they explored.

Standing, she cinched her harness tight and checked the lines were anchored securely, forgetting some of her apprehension as she worked through the once familiar routine. It had been a while since she'd done this, but she found that she hadn't forgotten it. Glancing up, she saw that Jack was still dithering through getting himself ready to go. Smothering an exasperated sigh, she waved him over. "Jack, get over here." Her voice echoed oddly from the rough rock walls.

He raised a bemused eyebrow at her disconcertingly mothering tone, but complied without a word. It took less than thirty seconds to get him strapped in and his gear ready, and she tried not to notice that he started smirking the moment she put her hands on him. "I would've got it--not that this isn't nice, too...in a kinky sort of way." For that comment, she smiled sweetly and avenged herself by snugging one of his straps tight enough that he squeaked. "Ow. Anti-grav's easier," he commented. "I take it you've done this more than once?"

Checking over her work once more, she explained, "Before Grant, I dated a rock climber."

"Mm. Good-looking?"

"Not bad. And, no, you can't have his number." She stopped, thinking over what she'd just said. "Why does it seem like I'm always telling you that?"

"Because you are," he pointed out. "I think you're trying to keep me all for yourself."

She ignored him to survey the drop and the rock face, casting her torch beam over the face, automatically searching out the tiny crevasses and outcroppings that would serve as finger-holds like Luke taught her. They weren't out for a workout this time, she reminded herself. Getting down, and up, with the gear they had would be easier than trying to scale the sheer face with no mechanical help. _Thank god._ If she never again had sore muscles like the ones she had when she was learning to climb, it would be too soon.

Picking up her pack, she pulled it on and grabbed up the torch. Tying a line to it, she went to lower it down into the shaft so she could get a look at the bottom and their landing zone. As the torch spun on the end of the rope, the dancing shadows it cast upon the walls grew longer, stranger and more eerie. Halfway down the pit, the pool of torchlight had dwindled to the point that she turned on the headlamp she was wearing.

"Long way down," Jack observed, reaching up for his own lamp.

"Almost there." The torch touched bottom and she jiggled the line a little to get its beam pointed in a direction that wouldn't blind them during their descent. "Ready?" He nodded, and she replied with a smile, "Watch that first step." Gwen watched for a moment as he climbed over the edge and started to lower himself, starting her own descent a minute later when she was sure Jack was doing all right.

At the bottom, they shed the climbing gear. While they would need it to get back up, there was no point in carrying the added weight any further. If they came across another spot where they needed more than the hundred feet of rope still in her pack, they would figure something else out.

Jack had the scanner out again and was handing it to her. Surprised, she accepted it a little gingerly. "You wanted to learn," he said with a shrug. As an aside he added, "With the distinct bonus that _I_ don't have to carry it anymore." He laughed and danced away from the irked swing she took at him, but quickly returned to help her.

The results were the same as they had been since entering the mine, nothing conclusive. Jack furrowed his brow at it and complained again about how short the scanner's range was down here.

He consulted the device on his wrist again. More that just a timepiece, she could see now, though she had never imagined it was only a watch. "What is that, Jack?" For a second he looked like he wasn't going to answer. She shook her head. "Never mind, Captain Jack. Keep your broken compass."

He stiffened. Cold, hard suspicion flashed across his features. She felt pinned by the sheer force of it. "How'd you--"

Unsure what she'd said to provoke such a reaction, she hurried to explain, cutting across his demand. "Captain Jack Sparrow. It's a movie, Jack." He listened, the hard expression slacking. "_Pirates of the Caribbean?_ He's got this compass that everyone assumes is useless because it doesn't point north. But he won't explain why he still has it."

Jack considered and then, resigned, he shoved up his sleeve and showed her the cuff, pulling back a leather flap and uncovering a complex user-interface. "Wristcomputer. Functions as a scanner--among other things--but a hell of a lot lighter than the Sato-Price model." He tilted his head toward the comparatively clunky box in her grasp. "Unfortunately, its range down here isn't much better."

She bit her lip to keep her next question from being _Where'd you get it?_ because, even without his statement, it was obvious he didn't get it from Angela or Toshiko. But it was also clear to her that he was berating himself for his mistake and that he'd showed the thing to her only because she happened to catch him in an obliging mood. Gwen chose her next question very carefully, knowing a trickle of information was better than having the source shut down completely because she'd opted for a full-on interrogation.

"Handy. And now I'm hauling around fifteen pounds of the other why?"

"Bio-keyed to me. Wouldn't do you any good."

_Bio-keyed?_ She had been around the Institute long enough to know that Torchwood definitely didn't have that kind of technology. But she realised there was something else he'd let slip with his unexpectedly violent response to 'Captain Jack'.

"Ah." She paused, drawing a breath to put forward her guess about his reaction. "So...Captain Jack Harkness, I presume?"

The look he gave her turned to a rakish smile touched with rue. "I'll thank you not to spread that around."

"You _can_ trust me, Jack. Suppose asking what branch of service--even what country--is out of the question," she said, knowing she was pushing it, but leaving him an out. He took the out.

"Nothing you would have heard of. Leave it at that." He would say no more about it.

"Done." For now. "Sorry."

He shook his head, dismissing her apology. "Nothing to be sorry over. My own fault I hired a detective." He craned his neck a bit to look her straight in the eye, the spark of mischief in him returned. "It's something I have to live with." She noticed he didn't ask her to stop asking questions.

She smiled. "You know, I appreciate the fact there are things you can't tell me. Official Secrets Act, the others--I signed them, too."

She had been vetted to a higher security level than she ever knew existed when she joined Torchwood--_before_ she joined Torchwood. Grant too. Gwen remembered the day she'd tracked down the Institute and their front, a little tourist office situated near the Millennium Centre, the day she'd thought she was being so clever, posing as a pizza delivery girl and infiltrating the secret organisation only to be met by Jack. He had slapped a thick packet of forms down in front of her with the words, "Congratulations on getting this far. Come work for me."

When she got back to the flat that afternoon, Grant had been freaked, immediately gathering her into his arms, enveloping her in a smothering embrace and telling her he'd been afraid he'd never see her again. MI-5 had been to see him, interviewing him and asking scary questions about her, stonewalling any time Grant asked what their interest was. He'd finally let go of her reluctantly so she could answer a call from her mum with a frighteningly similar tale.

"All you ever have to do is tell me when to let something go. But aside from that..." She placed her hand on his arm, recalling the hurt that she'd glimpsed in him that morning. "If you ever need someone to talk to..."

Jack smiled again, warmly, and covered her hand with his for a second. "I might take you up on that sometime. Thank you."

oOoOo

The hope of actually finding anything down here was getting pretty tattered. He and Gwen had been exploring pitch-black tunnels and caverns for hours now and still had exactly squat to show for it. There was no telling how far these tunnels extended and both his wristcomputer and the scanner were practically useless against the dense limestone walls. Jack glanced at the chronometer displayed on his wristcomputer. He'd give it another hour and, if they still had not found anything, pack it in and get back up to the surface. One call back to the office and he could get a team of investigators out yet tonight--though his popularity would take an unavoidable hit for it--and the mining company survey maps for the mine. Then at least they'd have a guide as opposed to this wandering.

Had he been a subscriber to his own directives, they should have called in the moment they'd found the ship. But he wanted to know more about the situation they were dealing with and assess the threat level before complicating matters by turning a load of rabid Torchwood investigators loose on it. Loath to hand the ship on the surface and its technology over to his often overzealous staff just yet, and especially loath to hand over living aliens, he wanted to make sure he couldn't take care of the problem first. If the aliens were harmless, he wanted nothing more than to set them on their merry way.

But, if he and Gwen didn't turn up something on their own soon, he would be forced to make the call. If the owners of the craft really did pose a danger to this planet, that had to be his first priority.

He looked over to her, slumped beside him against the chamber wall where they'd stopped for a rest and an energy bar, the lamplight casting her features in shadow. She was tired, her eyes closed and shoulders hunched, her temper shortened by fatigue, frustration and hunger. He would confess that he knew exactly how she felt. There was one bright spot; there didn't seem to be room within her for both the fatigue and her earlier trepidation. She hadn't said anything, but he had seen it, lurking in the spaces between her fascination and the distraction of getting them down here.

Suddenly she was alert, fumbling for the heavy-duty flashlight providing the illumination for their rest stop. "Gwen?"

She instantly shushed him, switching off the lamp as she did so, plunging them into blackness. "Listen," she hissed in the darkness. But not complete darkness, he was shocked to realise as his eyes adjusted. There was a very, very faint glimmer down the unexplored passage to their right, and though he strained to hear what she had, he heard nothing but the soft sound of dripping water echoing through the cavern.

Touching his wristcomputer, the device's backlight responded with a soft, confident glow that he sheltered with his hand, and he directed a scan toward the foxfire-lit tunnel. Beside him, the sibilant sound of something drawn against canvas told him Gwen was quietly gathering things into her pack, finally running the zipper closed with a hushed purr. The reading was distorted; he couldn't be sure of numbers and positions, but there were definitely life-signs up ahead.

"Got something," he whispered to her, getting to his feet as silently as he could. Feeling her move beside him, he found her shoulder in the blackness, urging her with a firm hand to stay where she was for the moment. Gwen heeded the wordless order and he crept toward the light, cautiously feeling out each step, careful not to shift the loose rock debris underfoot.

He had not gone far when he heard something. Stopping, he listened--distant and muffled, but voices. About to move on, he froze as something brushed his hip. The touch came again, bolder at his waist. Gwen. He rolled his eyes, yet could not keep himself from smiling indulgently. He should've known she was too curious, brave, or headstrong--very possibly a combination of the three--to stay put. Taking her hand, he continued forward.

Several minutes passed as they stalked the source of the illumination, the ambient light in the passage brightening to the point that he didn't have to hold on to Gwen to keep her from blindly tripping over him. The floor had become decidedly rougher, the walls no longer smooth and the tunnel narrower. It seemed the mine linked to a system of natural caves.

Ahead, the source of the light became visible. The passage had widened out some, another tunnel running off to the left. The white light, brilliantly bright after shuffling around in the dark, shone through a jagged opening in the rock wall in front of them. A few feet up from the floor, the hole looked just wide enough that he'd be able to crawl through it.

Jack glanced down the left-hand tunnel, checking it was clear, as Gwen approached the bright opening. They hadn't heard the voices again, but now there was the clear sound of movement echoing in what sounded like a good-sized room beyond the opening.

Gwen was shrugging out of her backpack and climbing into the passage before Jack could stop her. He'd been planning to take point, wanting to keep her out of harm's way, but he was learning that there was little he could do to dissuade Gwen Cooper once she got it in her mind to do something, and he spared a brief, pitying thought for her boyfriend.

She stopped a few feet in; he could still see her legs. Her body blocked most of the light, throwing the passage he stood in into shadow, drawing irregular shining blocks on the stone walls. A second and she was twisting to worm her way back out again. He offered a hand to help her out.

"It looks down onto a big chamber on the other side," she briefed him, her voice hushed. "Something's there, but it's underneath the hole near the wall. Couldn't see much. Whatever's down there, it looks like it's set up house."

Jack nodded, leaving his pack behind and crawling in for his own look. Gwen had been right about setting up housekeeping. The wide, vaulted chamber was scene to what amounted to an encampment of some sort. He could see a sleeping pallet shoved against one wall, a makeshift kitchen and living area filling the rest of the view. Like the ship, he didn't recognise the design of the equipment either.

Catching movement at the edge of his vision, he pulled back to avoid detection as a something entered the cavern below. Easing forward to get a look, he saw the alien. It was hard to judge size from his position, but he guessed the creature was about two and a half metres tall with roughly scaled green skin. It was bipedal and powerfully built, and looked exactly like the sort of thing you'd rather not run into in a dark cavern.

Oh, Jack knew better than to make assumptions like that. He was well-travelled enough to understand that appearance had nothing to do with the temperament or intelligence of a species, but he was still human, still prone to the instinctual reactions of his Earth-evolved ape brain, as the Doctor used to put it. These creatures had to be intelligent based solely on the level of the technology he could see scattered below and the fact that they had piloted the ship upstairs, but their purpose here remained a mystery.

The alien turned in his direction, but did not look up. Instead, it addressed the room's other occupant--or occupants; as Gwen had told him, in his current position, half of the chamber was obscured. Softly trumpeting and strangely rhythmic, the creature's language was one Jack had never heard before.

He watched and listened to the conversation for a few more moments before edging his way back out of the hole. Gwen was crouched close by and looked to him expectantly, but before he could say anything to her, another voice caught his attention, and Gwen's. Unlike the alien voices below, this one and the one answering were speaking in Welsh-accented English. The missing cavers. The indistinct sounds of the second conversation filtered up to them from the other tunnel.

Grabbing Gwen's pack from where she had discarded it beside the opening, he pulled it open and extracted the tablet PC he'd packed there earlier. The translator he'd got from UNIT was going to get its field test.

"Gwen," he murmured to her, preparing the computer, "take this and record as much of the aliens' conversation as you can. We'll need as much data as possible to compile a usable language database. Once we get a translation, we can figure out what they're doing here."

She nodded, replying in an equally hushed tone. "You off to find Westman and Matheson?"

"That's the plan. If I'm not back in thirty minutes--or if something happens to me; the way sound carries in here, I think you'll hear if it does--get to the surface and call Bast and explain the situation. Use your judgement, but tell him I don't want them running in here with guns blazing if it can be helped. Call me naïve, but I'd love to see them try diplomacy first." He glanced up from the computer at her. "For once."

"No one could call you naïve, Jack." She smirked and took the computer as he handed it to her.

He picked up his pack and winked at her. "See you in hell."

oOoOo

Jack disappeared down the shadowy tunnel, and she watched him go. A large part of her was wishing she could go with him, be there to protect his back, but she also knew that she had an important role to play in intel gathering, as well. How many times had the case been cracked by the guys on stake-out?

Gwen hefted the tablet computer and carefully manoeuvred her way into the hole in the wall again, taking extreme caution not to jostle the translator too badly and not to dislodge any loose pebbles getting settled. Finding a position she thought she could spend half an hour in, she peered down into the aliens' camp again, finally catching her first sight of one of them: big with a tough-looking, mottled green hide and scales like a huge reptile, its four-fingered hands ending in what appeared to be long, pointed talons.

She looked on, enthralled, and a strangely disconnected feeling settled into her, as if this wasn't really happening, like what was happening below her was part of a movie or a programme on the telly. Suddenly, the creature turned its elongated head in such a way that Gwen was sure she'd been spotted, its black eyes almost certainly on her, and the feeling melted like ice under a blow-torch, leaving harsh, stinging clarity. Heart racing, she stayed statue-still and eventually the alien looked away, apparently unaware that she was there. Gwen shuddered as she let out the breath she'd been holding. She was safe for the moment, but she had realised that she couldn't let her guard down like she had. She had to keep her wits about her. No matter how incredibly amazing and interesting the experience.

Dutifully the translator in front of her ground away at its function, storing and cataloguing, sorting the sounds and sound sequences of the language being spoken below, displaying nothing very interesting while it did it. When the database was large enough, it would begin to assign the sound sequences to English words according to its best guess as to their meanings. The whole process was hugely complex and technical, based in statistics, theories of language, semantics and syntax, and had taken many people over at UNIT, a lot smarter than she was, years to devise. She just marvelled at the simple fact that it worked.

There were at least three distinct voices that she could now recognise and a few minutes passed as she merely listened intently to the ebb and flow of the conversation. It might have been her imagination, but it seemed to be getting more heated. An argument?

The creature below jerked up from where it'd been lounging on a pile of cushions, getting to its feet, intensely angry. Gwen assumed she could safely apply human body language to the alien in this case. The creature glared at a place just under Gwen's perch for several seconds until a second creature crossed to the first, trilling softly to it, a soothing sound. The larger, first alien shrugged away as the second put a hand out to it, but the action didn't deter the second. It just reached out again and was accepted this time, allowed to embrace the first. An apology, she hypothesised.

She smiled as the incomprehensible drama unfolding below her brought to mind the memory of the holiday she and Grant spent in Majorca. Grant had surprised her with it--a getaway to take her mind off the lingering grief over the loss of her partner, her friend. Sand and beach, and insanely they'd ended up hostage to the telly for an hour each afternoon, inexplicably drawn in by one particular Spanish soap opera. And neither of them even spoke Spanish. They'd guessed at what was happening, making up their own story and sub-plots as they went along.

This was a little like that, except it was really happening. Suddenly she felt like a voyeur, eavesdropping on private exchange--between family members, close friends, lovers? Impossible to know.

About to move away from the opening, Gwen paused as the talking stopped. She glanced down once again. The two creatures within her view were both staring off in the same direction toward the side of the chamber, staying that way for a long moment until the voice closest to her seemed to pose a question and the spell was broken. The larger of the two she could see replied and headed off in the direction it had been gazing in.

Though it was a different tunnel and level, it was vaguely the same direction Jack had headed in.

oOoOo

Twenty minutes after leaving Gwen with the translator, he was working his way down the darkened tunnel, senses sharpened to a knife's edge by adrenaline, years of combat training and experience coming to the fore as Jack stalked forward. It was times like this that he missed being able to carry his sonic blaster, the .38 at his side a crude substitute for his Villengard 470. Though, down here with only Gwen to question it, he probably could have. But then, he'd already been doing a fine job of supplying her with ammunition. He had no idea why he had shown her the wristcomputer, confessed his Time Agency rank, but he knew he could trust Gwen not to share the information. That much he was sure of.

Having left the first puddle of light behind, folded once again into near pitch-blackness and having to feel his way along for a few metres--he dared not use a light and invite the possibility of giving away his presence--he'd soon found another patch of light some distance down the passage in front of him. The path had led him downward, and he estimated that he had descended to about the same level as the floor of the chamber he'd left Gwen observing.

_She'll be fine_, he reassured himself one more time. Gwen could handle herself and she was unlikely to give away her position. Besides, there were only two entrances to the passage she was in. The way they'd entered, which was likely still clear--they'd thoroughly searched that approach--and the tunnel he was in, putting him between them and her.

Unfortunately the cavers' conversation hadn't lasted long and he was left hoping he'd hear something to let him know he was close to their position. That was the thing about caverns and caves: rock walls, twisting passages and echoing chambers all made for excellent--and rather distorted--sound conduction. The smallest noise could be heard from a great distance, but often it was impossible to pinpoint the location of the source.

Finally, he came to an opening large enough to count as a doorway, light pouring out of it, robbing him of his cover of darkness and making him feel unnervingly exposed. The tiny sound of cloth alerted him that the room beyond was occupied. Using the scan on his wristcomputer as a substitute for sticking his head in and looking, he found that there were two life-signs, both human, within. There were other signs registering, but not close and not clearly.

Steeling himself, he risked a glance into the chamber beyond, ready to draw back immediately if he spotted trouble. Seeing none, Jack slipped inside.

The room, another natural limestone cavern, more a widening of a passage that seemed to parallel the one he had just exited, tended toward the ovoid. Narrow tunnels led off in two opposite directions, and the high, stalactite-covered ceiling described a high arch, the edges of the space dotted with large columns of rock where the floor and ceiling had stretched to be united. Near the wall opposite his entry point, a cage of sturdy metallic mesh had been erected, sleeping pallets on its floor, sanitation unit occupying one corner.

As Jack warily approached the mesh confinement housing the two men, an eye on the passages, mindful of the aliens not far away, one of the captives noticed him. Shocked, the man moved to speak, and Jack hastily held two fingers to his lips for silence. Shaking his drowsing friend and giving him the same warning, the captive scrambled to his feet. His friend followed suit.

"Guessing you're Westman and Matheson?" Jack whispered when he got close, garnering emphatic nods from both of them. "Both all right? You aren't hurt at all?"

"We're fine." And, indeed, they did look unharmed. Just scared and weary after their ordeal. Inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief, more convinced that the deaths of Nelms and Longden were accidental. "But there are these monsters," the blond started, his eyes nearly wild with remembered panic.

"Yeah, I've seen 'em," Jack replied smoothly, projecting a well-practised air of authoritative confidence. "Try to stay calm." The last thing he needed was one or both of these guys succumbing to blind terror and getting him caught. "You Matheson?" he asked the lank-haired blond.

"Michael Westman."

"Doug Matheson," his skinny friend answered.

"Jack Harkness." For the smile and tone of voice he used, he might've met the two at a party instead of locked in a cage deep underground. "Well, Mike and Doug, we're going to get you out of here, but it'll be a bit." Both men made to protest, but Jack shushed them with a gesture. "We're not ready to move yet. And I'd rather like to get out of here with everyone's hide intact, okay?" That included the aliens, but he neglected to mention that point.

"How long?" Doug wanted to know.

"I don't have an answer for that yet," he told him truthfully. "A couple of hours at a guess. Just know we're here and we're working on it."

"Who's we?" the kid asked again, curious.

"Security services."

They both looked mildly impressed and Jack was appreciative of the fact that it seemed he'd be able to leave them to sit tight for the moment. He needed to get back to Gwen before she called out the troops. Though he had the creeping suspicion that, if he didn't turn up on time, she wouldn't follow his order and go call in backup. She'd be down here ready to drag him by the scruff out of whatever distress he'd managed to get himself into. Dauntless, that was Gwen Cooper.

Jack was about to ask one final question, try to find out what kind of numbers they were looking at, but was interrupted by a sound from one of the passages. Someone was coming, and he froze, trying to evaluate how close they were. Too close, he decided, sprinting for the opening, resuming a more stealthy pace when he reached the cover of the darker tunnel.

When he determined he'd reached a dark enough section he paused, pressing himself against the jagged stone, and listened. He could no longer hear anything that indicated he was being followed, so he moved on, back up the tunnel toward the place he had left Gwen.

Jack was halfway up the sloped passage when he stopped again. He could hear the voices from Gwen's chamber, but he could also hear something that chilled him, and the gradual brightening of the light behind him confirmed his fear. _Now_ he was being followed.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

He couldn't be sure whether the approaching creature was after him or whether their paths just happened to coincide, but Jack was unable to imagine too many scenarios in which being caught at this juncture would be a good thing. That meant sacrificing a little caution for speed was probably the wisest course of action. Hoping the voices from further up the tunnel and the noise made by the alien behind him would cover the sound of his retreat, he broke into a jog, pleased that the run, at least to his ears, didn't make appreciably more noise.

The light ahead of him glowed brighter with every stride he took, every foot of elevation he gained until, breathing heavily, he reached the top. Crossing quickly to where Gwen had stuffed herself into the rocky opening, he put a hand out to let her know he was there.

She shifted and emerged partway, seeming to note that he'd been running.

"Company," he warned her.

Her eyes went wide and she scrambled the rest of the way out of the hole, taking care to keep as quiet as possible. He stopped to listen again. The creature was much closer now; its appearance was imminent. Jack grabbed up her pack from the floor next to the opening, ushering Gwen out the way they'd first come in. They had to find cover, and quickly.

They ran until it was too dim to do so safely, and Gwen flipped on her headlamp. As far as he could tell, they'd left the creature behind, but not too far. It was safe to use the light, but they needed someplace to hide in the hope that it wasn't really looking for them and would simply pass them by if only they could get out of the main tunnel.

Jack estimated that they'd soon be back to the large cavern where they'd rested earlier and knew there was no cover there. They had to find something soon or risk being caught in the open in the cavern. A turning, a siding, anything.

Finally, in the wildly bouncing beam of Gwen's lamp, he spied an alcove. Grabbing her shoulder, he spun her to the side and slammed into her, her back hitting the wall with much more force than he intended. Didn't matter. They were out of sight for the moment.

"Fuck, Jack," she gasped, keeping her voice low, well aware of their danger. Her body was tense under his, her breath laboured from where he'd just knocked it out of her. She extinguished the lamp, throwing them into blackness as he hurriedly dropped both her pack and his to the ground.

"That's a good idea. You should do that sometime," he breathed to her. "Bring along that boyfriend of yours."

"Sure, if that's what you want," she answered, her breath tickling his ear, the tone offhanded. As if he'd just told her his lunch order.

"Great. But later, okay? Got a situation to worry about right now."

"Promises, promises." The distant remembrance of Rose in his arms uttering the same words as they danced together on a chilly London night swam to the surface of Jack's thoughts as Gwen murmured in his ear. He felt himself give a sad half-smile.

Then Gwen went totally still, her heart hammering in her chest under his, the translator she still clutched pressed awkwardly between them. He could only pray they were well enough hidden here. Her breath hitched and she held it, listening intently. He was too close to see her face in the growing light, but if they were to remain undetected he had to stay that way. The alcove they were squeezed into just wasn't that big, barely more than a shallow impression in the cave wall.

He followed her lead, holding his own breath, straining to hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears, over the thunder of his heart.

Then he heard it, and his blood froze in his veins.

It was close. A few metres at most. Right on top of them.

He closed his eyes--his back to the opening, he couldn't see anything but craggy stone wall anyway. And Gwen's arm around him, her hand pressed into the small of his back, pulled him tighter to her, closer to the wall. An aeon seemed to pass as he was aware of nothing but the pressure of Gwen's sidearm holster jammed into his hip and the soft shuffle and scrape behind him as the creature passed them by.

When the sound finally receded and the passage outside was dark and silent once more, a stiff measure of relief coursed through him, and they both let out relieved sighs. Jack pulled himself away from his partner, rubbing at the painful indention in his hip. He grinned, though he knew she couldn't see him. "Walk in the park," he whispered.

"Some park. I'd hate to see the neighbourhood." There was sarcasm in her reply, but he could hear the wry smirk on her lips. "We need to get out of here. If it comes back, we won't be hidden here." He'd come to the same conclusion. While the alcove deep enough to shield them from view from one direction, it was angled such that it was readily visible from the opposite.

Jack confirmed her assessment as he bent, his hand finding her pack. Picking it up, he handed it to her before donning his again. He sensed Gwen kneel to rummage in the rucksack. Taking the chance, he used his wristcomputer's backlight to provide a small amount of dusky light for her. "Thanks," she said softly, stowing the translator.

They had to move, but which way? He wasn't thrilled by either direction open to them. Neither course, forward or back the way they came, would provide them the cover they'd need if the alien came back. Reluctantly, he decided to follow behind the alien and hope it had a destination and didn't double back. If they could get back to the larger cavern, they could lose themselves in the mine's wider network of tunnels. From there, they'd have a chance to regroup and appraise their position.

Gwen ready to go, he shut down the wristcomputer. Blanketed by darkness again, right hand on the rough wall beside him, the other in Gwen's, he led them forward.

As expected, the wall under his hand soon fell away as the passage widened into a much larger room, the echoing sound of water suddenly fuller and more resonant in the open space. Blindly moving a few metres into the chamber, Jack glanced around. Nothing but total black met his eyes except the vague glow from the tunnel they'd just exited. The sense of foreboding that'd had him feeling wound too tight inside began to slacken, the tension in his muscles receding.

Home free. No sign of the alien.

That was, of course, when a vice-like hand fell on his shoulder and jerked him off-balance.

oOoOo

There was a startled oath from Jack as his hand was torn away from hers. Fearing he had fallen, she cried out reflexively. "Jack?"

The sounds a struggle and Jack's, "Gwen, get back!" caused her to reach for her Glock and her headlamp at the same time. The light that flooded her vision was almost painful and the tableau drawn in hideous shadows and muted colours before her sent a shot of icy water through her insides. The alien, its back mostly to her, had Jack in its powerful grip, pinning his arms to his sides.

"Jack!" Ripping her pistol from its holster, she instinctively came to firing stance, knowing she couldn't shoot without risk to her partner. The entirety of the alien's focus was on Jack fighting against its hold, apparently content to ignore her. Feeling she wasn't a threat?

A few more moments of vain effort and Jack stilled, taking stock. The creature remained impassive.

Gwen watched them watching each other for what felt like an eternity. Finally, it was Jack who broke the stalemate. He took a deep breath, taking his wary gaze off his captor to glance to her, flinching away again when her lamp caught him straight in the eyes. He made a somewhat restricted motion with his hand for her to lower the weapon.

"Jack, are you sure?" she hissed to him.

"I'm okay, Gwen," he finally said. "I don't think it wants to hurt me." She couldn't fathom how he could sound so calm with that thing so close to him, holding him, but she did as he told her. He then addressed the creature with a smooth smile, absurdly greeting it as if it was someone he'd just met in a pub. "Hello. Jack Harkness. The lovely lady behind you is Gwen. Sorry, but I didn't catch your name."

He paused, looking mildly hopeful, continuing when his captor made no reply. "No, then? Okay, sorry to crash the place like this, but we were hoping you could enlighten us about the spaceship up top. Oh, and nice ambush, by the way. Been a while since anyone's got the better of me like that." His smile widened to a grin; he was genuinely amused that the alien had bested him. If the situation didn't have her feeling like there were tight steel bands of tension wrapped around her chest, Gwen would've shaken her head in disbelief.

In response, the creature made a funny little wuffling noise and released one of Jack's arms, still regarding him cautiously, holding him in place with one clawed hand on his shoulder. Jack stood his ground and made no attempt to escape or pull away from it. When Jack didn't move, the creature thought it was safe to turn and rake its small, close-set black eyes over her. Nothing that felt like menace showed, simply alert interest. And it didn't appear unduly concerned over the unaimed weapon in her hand.

"Yeah, I think we're all right," Jack said to her though he didn't look in her direction again. "Go ahead and put the gun away."

Her reply was tight as she started, "I don't--"

Never taking his eyes from the alien, Jack cut across her protest with a firm, "Do it." Gwen hesitated--she felt safer with it out--but again did as he directed. "Remember we were going to see if diplomacy worked this time?" In the shadowy half-light, she was sure she caught the glint of exhilaration in his eyes. The madman was enjoying this.

"All right, then." Gwen had to concede that for now the alien was docile enough. But she couldn't help but think that that could change at any moment. "Now what?"

"Well, we don't seem be getting very far in Eng--"

Jack stopped when, with a glance between the two of them, the creature suddenly stooped to retrieve something from the floor--a torch of some kind, handle and control tailored for its thick-fingered hands. Her hand had gone immediately to the Glock when the alien had started moving. She let the hand drop to her side as she realised the device wasn't a weapon.

"Jumpy," Jack scolded. She shot back a glare which he ignored. He started again, "As I was saying, English..."

The creature spoke then, saying something in its language followed by something that sounded stunningly like, "Come."

Something akin to her own astonishment flitted over Jack's face and was gone. "Say again?" Did it understand them?

"Come," the creature repeated as distinctly as its non-human mouth and lips would allow. As a way of emphasising its meaning, it grasped Jack's forearm firmly, pulling and encouraging him to go with it.

"I'll have you know I'm not one to turn down an offer like that, but usually there are drinks involved first. Some dancing..." The motion became a more insistent tug when Jack did not follow quickly enough. "Okay!" He let himself be led. "In this case," he told the creature, "I'm going to make an exception because you're not giving me much of a choice here."

From the way the alien was regarding her, Gwen knew she wasn't escaping the invitation either. Her apprehension rose a notch with the scrutiny and the idea of what might befall them when they'd reached whatever destination the alien intended. She backed away a few steps as the creature approached and she was in the tunnel again. It stopped when it came along side of her, expectant--waiting for her to move again?

But Jack was reaching out for her with his free hand. "C'mon, Gwenny," he coaxed with a faint smile. "Apparently we have an appointment back down the tunnel and our friend doesn't seem content to leave you out." She put her hand in his and he gave it a reassuring squeeze as they started forward.

Their friend wasn't in any hurry as they descended, the pace sedate at best. And by the time they reached the hole in the rock that had been her listening post, the anticipation was driving her mad.

"Westman and Matheson are fine." Jack's non sequitur shook her out of her thoughts. She found his concerned gaze upon her as they trailed along behind their escort. It had let go of Jack after a few minutes, but looked back occasionally as if it wasn't entirely sure they'd still be there. Jack, however, seemed willing to offer his hand for as long as she needed it, and, though it felt a little childish, Gwen found his hand in hers a welcome comfort.

"What?"

"You were worrying about what was going to happen to us. The cavers are all right. Stands to reason that we will be too." His smile was warm and his expression earnest. She wanted to believe he knew what he was talking about. "And we haven't been threatened. Not after the hide and seek act in the dark--which I think was just this one's way of amusing itself."

She nodded and gave a noncommittal "Yeah."

He grinned anyway. "That's my girl." Jack's spate of enthusiasm made the creature's head swivel back in alarm and it considered them for a second. "See? Still here, big fella. Lead on," he told it with a carry-on gesture.

The creature made its wuffling noise again--an exasperated or an amused sound, she couldn't tell, but for some reason it made her smile. Apart from that one word of English, it hadn't talked to them again and showed no real sign of understanding what they were saying.

Eventually, their winding path through uneven, rocky passages ended in a massive cavern, brightly lit and distinctly airy despite being metres underground. The sheer majesty of the space caused her gaze to be swept immediately upward. Gwen ran her eyes over the shadowy irregularity of the cavern ceiling high over their heads, spotting a familiar outcropping of rock, and she realised where they were. Turning her head, she found the opening she had eavesdropped through to gather language data for the translator.

The realisation caused her to take another look at their captor. She was embarrassed to figure out this late that it was the alien she had been watching before.

"Nice digs," Jack commented appreciatively, and it caused her to pay attention to the rest of the room. As she had seen from her previous view, the place was more campsite than anything else. Spartan sleeping and living areas had been arranged within the space. Heavy-looking, grey crates divided the areas, affording a marginal amount of privacy for the improvised bedchambers, she supposed.

The space under the opening that she couldn't see before was no different, but she finally got her look at the owner of the third voice. It looked older than the other one, its scaly hide dull and uneven compared to the creature that had brought them here. It was also injured. A long, and she suspected deep, gash ran along the outside of one of its thighs as it reclined on a thick cushion set atop a few more of the ubiquitous grey crates. The wound had been left undressed, but the edges had been pulled together by a few ragged, inexpertly-sewn stitches.

In her awe, she had stopped not far into the cavern. But then, Jack hadn't made it any further either, and their friend was now herding them toward the older alien, the leader of this group, presumably. Part of her wondered what the protocol was.

As it shuffled her and Jack forward, it spoke to the leader, who listened intently, inserting its own sporadic comment.

"What do you suppose that discussion is about?" she whispered to Jack. Morbidly, she couldn't help adding, "Which wine we'd be tastier with?"

There was an instant of indecision in his expression, and Gwen couldn't tell whether he was going to laugh at her or whether he was going to be horrified at the suggestion or whether his response was going to be something else entirely. His features settled into something mildly amused and he told her, "Sentient species rarely consider each other to be food sources," in a tone of voice that was only slightly lecturing. "Though some would beg to differ, last time I looked, humans qualified."

"Oh, good." She eyed the row of sharply pointed teeth visible when the alien talked. "_They_ know that, then?"

"Stop it," he chided, rubbing at his forehead briefly. "How much translator data were you able to get before?"

She struggled to remember what the tablet PC was reading when she last looked. "I think it was estimating four hours to a translation. I didn't think to look when I put it away."

"Yeah, well, don't worry about it. We were both a little preoccupied. Do you remember shutting it down?" he asked.

Gwen shook her head. "No, I didn't. It should still be working. Probably still recording."

"That's fine. The bigger the sample base, the better we'll be able to communicate. Eventually," Jack muttered, a trace of frustration seeping through. He sighed. "Till then, we'll have to make do."

Unexpected movement behind them and an excited third voice made her start. It startled Jack as well, betraying the fact that he was more on edge than his devil-may-care act let on. Another alien had entered, the smaller one Gwen had seen earlier. Walking quickly and talking even faster, it crossed to them.

When it got near, it looked them over carefully, scanning over Jack and fixing an uncomfortable amount of its interest on her. It reached out a hand to touch her once and it felt like the next move was going to be for the thing to grab at her. "Why do I feel like the puppy presented to a four year old on Christmas morning?" she murmured to Jack as she tried to avoid the contact and hoped wasn't going to offend by doing so.

Jack didn't get to make the salacious comment she expected from him as a command from the elder interrupted the younger creature's enthusiasm. It ducked its head in obedience for an instant, curbing its obvious delight into something more staid. Gwen breathed a sigh of relief and surreptitiously inched away from the alien, closer to Jack.

Then, to her surprise, it spoke to her. "Hurt?" it asked.

She was shocked for a moment. "We're both fine," Jack answered. He nudged her when it seemed her response was needed as well.

"No. No, you didn't hurt me," she said, abashed that it came out a little stammered. The creature appeared contemplative--trying to decipher what she'd said? Gwen had to ask, "You understand us?"

It cocked its head in what she took to be bemusement and very carefully formed the words, "Apologies. You stay."

"Sorry? Stay?" She was confused. Stay where?

Jack put a hand on her shoulder. "I think it means we're _guests_ for the time being, Gwen. And I don't think they really understand what we're saying." And, indeed, there didn't seem to be anything like comprehension in any of the three aliens. They were stringing words together and hoping the result meant something. She was again reminded of being in Majorca with Grant, trying to put together a dinner order with their combined ten words of Spanish. Jack shrugged, pragmatic. "My guess is we've hit the limit of their English. Let me try something." And he said something in a guttural language that Gwen was almost sure she'd never heard before.

The smallest alien was intensely interested, but it was the eldest that replied. "No."

"Okay, that's something. Not a really a valid response to the question, though. How 'bout this?" He tried a different language, something that might have been Asian from the sound of it.

This time "no" was accompanied by a hand gesture--as much as the thing had hands--one hand cutting a horizontal line in the air.

Jack grinned in triumph. "Now we're getting somewhere." His own hands described a circular shape and he touched his fingers to the centre of his forehead twice. "Yes, I understand that." He made another sign and said, "A little." As a private comment to Gwen, he ruefully added, "But likely not enough to help us much."

oOoOo

The leader trilled happily, signing out something that Jack translated as _As with me._ Unfortunately he didn't know any more of the signed language than Jack did. But the alien had the game now and addressed him in another common language, Rilliskcis.

Unfortunately, Jack's smattering of Rilliskcis barely extended beyond _What's an attractive being like you doing in a place like this?_ and _Buy you a drink?_--after that, conversations tended to be carried out on a less than verbal level. Hardly useful in this case. "Yeah, it would turn out that the only standard you speak is Rilliskcis," he muttered, shaking his head.

"You know the language?" Gwen's eyes were round with wonder. She was going to make him explain this one.

"Enough to proposition the looker over there." He tipped his head to indicate the smallest of the creatures--female by his reckoning. "Or find a bar that serves humanoids. Oh, and I could probably swear like a sailor if the need arose. Nothing that's going to help us find out why they're here or get us out of here." He pulled together enough of his Rilliskcis to tell the creature he recognised the language, but didn't speak it.

"What is it? I don't recognise it." He knew she had guessed the language wasn't human and was playing coy.

The leader was busy with his underlings--most likely explaining to them what had been discovered--so Jack had no way to avoid doing the same. "It's Rilliskcis. A fairly common galactic standard." Unfortunately one of the few standards he'd never had much call to learn. His professional life with the Time Agency hadn't ever sent him to the side of the galaxy where it was heavily used, and in his follow-on life as a con man, he'd never had use of it outside propositioning people in bars that served humanoids.

"Right." She was dying to ask how he knew it, he could tell. "So that was the other languages you tried--other 'galactic standards'?"

Well, the ones for this time zone, anyway. English, or rather, some of its derivatives would become standards in a few centuries once the human race found its way into space, but right now, he'd exhausted his knowledge. "Yeah, Harval's Trader's Tongue and the Varellian Common. The signed one doesn't have a name that I know of. It's just a way that beings who don't or can't vocalise communicate."

She eyed him critically. "How many languages _do_ you speak?"

"Fluently or"--he smirked at her--"like I speak Welsh?" That got a smile out of Gwen and she didn't press for an answer. Instead she said something to him in Welsh and the only thing he understood was the word for _Welsh_. So he plastered on a lascivious grin and leer that would probably get him punched by her boyfriend under other circumstances and purred, "That didn't have anything to do with sex, did it?"

She barked a laugh, apparently forgetting where she was and stirring up a little commotion with their green friends. "Jack, you're hopeless."

"Most people use the word incorrigible."

"That, too," Gwen agreed. She sobered slightly when she noticed the aliens' attention had returned to them. "So we've determined we can't muddle through with a combination of German, Esperanto and somebody or other's Trader's Tongue. Is that it?"

Fresh out of ideas, Jack looked to the aliens' leader. He didn't seem to have anything to add or try either. "I guess so. At least until the UNIT translator gives us something. If it gives us something."

A rapid-fire conversation between the aliens led to them being goaded away from the injured leader's improvised sickbed, toward another passage. "This audience is at an end," Gwen intoned regally.

"If it's any consolation, I'll probably get to introduce you to Matheson and Westman now." They were certainly headed in the right direction for that, the younger male and the female escorting them unhurriedly down the tunnel as they carried on a separate discussion over his and Gwen's heads.

Truth be told, being locked in a cell right now wasn't a terrible option. He needed some time to think and come up with a plan. To think over contingencies in case the translator failed to yield the hoped for results and they weren't able to converse coherently with these people. Not to mention it would be great just to get off his feet for a while. Without looking at his chronometer, he knew it had been hours since that rest stop with Gwen.

If nothing else, he'd been assured that this was no military operation. He'd suspected that it wasn't from the ship design, but the aggressiveness of the defences and the fact that he couldn't get a clean scan of ship's systems gave him room to worry. Now that he'd met the aliens, he would also be willing to bet that their presence here was not a precursor to invasion. No, they felt like explorers, scientists or researchers maybe--intuition steered him away from tagging them as a familial group, despite the relative youth of the male and female compared to their leader. Whether they were here on purpose or not was a question he had yet to answer. But if he could get a look inside a few of the equipment crates, he'd probably have a better idea of who they were and what they were up to.

Either way, their intent did not appear hostile--the cavers and the treatment of Gwen and himself confirmed it--and for that he was immensely grateful. This planet had seen enough nasty alien threats.

He was aware he needed to contact Torchwood soon. If only to make sure they knew not to come in with plasma rifles blazing when he and Gwen didn't call in. They were far underground, so needless to say cell phone was a total lost cause and the comm on his wristcomputer wouldn't penetrate either. Normally he'd have another day until anyone--usually Price--started looking for him, but this time, with Gwen along, the proper paperwork had been filed and standard procedure would be followed.

Jack started to work out the timeline in his head. They'd already missed the twelve-hour check-in. Six hours after, when the second scheduled check-in was missed, the acting director would be informed--and won't Bast just be thrilled to get that call at midnight. So, around six tomorrow morning, operations would be sending in the cavalry.

Once Bast ordered the search, it would take Price two seconds to locate the Range Rover's tracking signal, meaning--he checked the time--they had about twelve hours before the troops came knocking. That was if the North Wales Police didn't turn up first looking for the cavers. From what Clarkson had told them, the official search should be underway.

The tunnel widened out and, as he had anticipated, their tour had led to the chamber where the two hikers were jailed. At sight of their little party, Matheson and Westman launched themselves to their feet, the wariness of the aliens in their eyes muted by hope as they looked to Jack. He shook his head apologetically. "Still working on it, guys."

He came to stand beside the cage and watched while the female ran the sonic key over the locking mechanism. As prisoner security went, the lock was hardly adequate. He knew of at least three ways to circumvent the technology. But then these creatures weren't exactly expert jailers either. That much was painfully obvious in that, had he the mind for it, Jack could have escaped them a dozen times over.

The female pulled the cell door open with a scrape and made a little "in" gesture, her posture somewhat remorseful. So Jack grinned at her and complied to show her he didn't bear her any ill will for doing what she had to, perfectly content to play along for the time being. The two men already in the cell observed the scene with dumbfounded expressions, and thankfully didn't make a move toward escape themselves. It was clear they'd expected him to fight against being imprisoned.

"Jack?"

The distress in Gwen's voice made him turn. "Hold on!" he protested. She was still outside, the bigger alien trying to herd her away, the female trying to close the confinement door.

"What do I do?" Gwen looked as confused as he felt as she fought to stay close to him, blocking the effort to shut him in without her.

"Don't fight them. Evidently girls and boys get separate rooms." That was what he hoped, anyway, and his words did nothing to ease the tight apprehension in Gwen's stance. He threw his hand out through the narrowing opening and grasped hers briefly before she was gently but firmly forced away from him. "It'll be okay. I'll figure a way out," he assured her, trying to reassure himself in the process. Stepping aside to let the door close fully, he hooked his fingers into the mesh wall of the cage, watching them leave the chamber. "I'll find you," he called just before he lost sight of her.

His eyes slid closed and he let his forehead fall against the cold mesh, grasping at it until the wire bit into his fingers, angry with himself. He hadn't anticipated that. He hadn't imagined they'd separate him from Gwen.

"Why'd you let them lock you in?" came a voice from behind him. For an instant, he considered ignoring it.

Jack sighed wearily and looked over his shoulder. The blond--Mike Westman, he reminded himself--stared at him, perplexed, waiting for an answer. He searched for a response that would appease the guy. "Told you, we're still working on it."

"But you've got a gun," was the immediate reply.

The annoyance he felt for himself twisted and found a new target in the kid. Jack shoved it away to find something that would let him deal civilly with Westman. "You've seen those guys, right? You've been paying attention? They're huge with a hide two inches thick." Plainly, diplomacy was still slightly out of his reach at the moment. "Believe me, the .38 I'm carrying would only make 'em mad," he stated decisively, revelling a bit in the way Westman deflated, crestfallen.

Sighing again, letting the harshness drop from his voice, Jack turned to lean his shoulder against the wire. "We _are_ going to get out of here. It's just going to take a little longer than originally anticipated. Anyway, from what I've seen, they don't want to hurt us. We're only prisoners, I suspect, because they don't want anyone else finding out they're here."

He pushed at the cage door, rattling it against its latch. _Besides, why shoot our way out when it would take me half a minute to get this open?_ he thought. But he wouldn't tell his cellmates that. What would be the point of escaping if he hadn't figured out why the aliens were here and hadn't found a way to get them off the planet?

The other kid, Doug, moved to talk, but Jack cut him off before he could. "And, you know, I don't blame them. Think about it from their point of view: alien planet, no way to communicate with the locals, who would probably just capture and dissect them." _And I'm disgusted to admit some of those people work for me._ "They're scared of us." He should stop now. He was beginning to sound like a certain Time Lord he knew. Jack shook his head. "Now if you'll hang on a minute. I need to find out where they've stashed my partner."

Jack was about to call out to her when her voice drifted out of the tunnel, distorted by irregular rock walls. "Jack? You okay?" It was impossible to tell how far away she was.

He smiled. She was worried for him? "Just fine, Gwenny. Didn't I tell you, I live for this?"

He could hear her grinning as she retorted, "And here all this time I thought it was sex." Her brazen comment startled a genuine laugh out of him, relieved that she was all right if she was still bantering.

"Next best thing, I assure you," he called back to her, still grinning. "Where'd you end up?"

"I'm probably a hundred metres down the passage; there's another cavern. Looks like a makeshift lab of some kind."

"A lab?"

"Yeah, it reminds me of A-level biology in here. Specimens in cages--rabbits, a squirrel, a few birds, bugs... Something that looks a lot like a dissection set-up." Jack heard the hint of revulsion in her voice, but he couldn't imagine the former homicide detective was put off by the idea of dissection. He suspected it had more to do with the idea that a human might have been the subject of one. "Some machinery..."

That focused his attention. "Describe the machinery to me. Best as you can."

Jack hadn't realised the eye for detail Gwen possessed until she described what was probably a comm unit to him. Made sense that the aliens would bring it from the ship. Next was a data processing unit.

The next object was infinitely more interesting--an oblong nearly two metres long with connection piping at one end. Before she finished describing it, he was grinning to himself and was sure he knew what she she'd found. "One end is probably a good quarter metre larger than the end with all the connection points," he added.

Amazement had snuck into her tone when she replied. "Exactly."

"You're looking at a phasic energy converter, Gwen. It's probably from their ship and, unless I miss my guess, it's the reason they're here." The fact that it wasn't installed in the spaceship's engine compartment told him there was a problem with it. "If we're lucky, that meteor a few weeks ago was a controlled burn rather than a crash-landing." If it was a crash, there'd be more damage than just a busted converter and less chance he'd be able to get them under way again. "Is it intact? No chunks missing, not burned badly?"

"No. No, it looks okay from here."

He didn't reply right away, thinking over options. Foremost among them was whether to risk breaking out of the cell to go assess the converter's condition himself. If he could get it operational--

"So what's the next move, Jack?" Gwen's faraway voice interrupted his thoughts. "Broken spaceship."

He had to shush his cellmates when she said the word 'spaceship'. Of course, spaceship. How'd they think the aliens got here? "--call up the local garage and order a tow," she was saying. "Can't exactly offer them a lift home." _A lift home._ Not for the first time, Jack wished he still had the cell phone the Doctor had given him. Of course, if he still had the phone--or let the Doctor interface his wristcomputer to the TARDIS's comm system instead of insisting that he wanted to work it out for himself--he wouldn't be here. Wouldn't be cooling his heels, waiting around for him to turn up on Earth again. He would have had his ride or had his final words with the Time Lord a year ago.

"If I could get a look at it, I might be able to fix it. Maybe figure a workaround if I can't." He was giving away an awful lot in this conversation, adding a few more rounds of ammo to the Jack Harkness dossier that Gwen was compiling in that sharp mind of hers. Jack resigned himself to it. It couldn't be helped right now.

"Hold on, _you_ can fix it?"

"Assuming that's the only problem with the ship, yeah."

A long moment passed. "Okay, I'm going to take it as read that you really do know your way around alien spaceship parts, but if it could be fixed, wouldn't they have done it already and flown off back into space?" Gwen asked.

"Not if something happened to their engineer. More likely they weren't carrying one in the first place. It's like your car. You hop in, you go. Ignition coil goes out; can you fix it?" he offered as an example.

"No." He could tell she understood the point.

"Neither can I--well, not without a lot of fiddling. Not my speciality. That's what Sean in motor pool is for."

Jack had ruled out breaking out for the moment in favour of seeing if the translator was going to give them anything usable. Once it had finished compiling the translation matrix, he'd try his luck at convincing the aliens to let him have a go at that converter. "Still got the translator?" he called to Gwen. Between the aliens' limited translation and theirs, it might just be possible.

"Yes." There was a pause and he imagined she was digging the translator out of her pack and checking it over. The aliens hadn't taken his sidearm or pack from him. He assumed Gwen still had hers as well. "It's still estimating about ninety minutes for a usable database," she replied.

"All right. Let me know when it's done." He suppressed another sigh and turned back to his cellmates.

An hour and a half to wait. Great.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Gwen rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Looking at her watch, she was surprised at how late it was--nearly midnight. Being underground and with everything that had happened, she'd completely lost track of time. No wonder her eyes itched, but she was far too anxious to even try to sleep.

When she'd finished talking to Jack about the converter, she'd spent a few minutes scrolling through the tablet PC's incomplete translation. A partial transcript was accessible even though the programme hadn't yet finished. Very little of the aliens' language had been filled in at that point--a verb here, a few adjectives there--but her conversations with Jack in English were there and complete. And her statement to him in Welsh was translated as _I know you couldn't find a pub speaking only Welsh, let alone proposition anyone, but I wouldn't put it past you to try._

But, to her amazement, the translator had also recognised the languages Jack had tried in his attempt to find a common ground with the aliens' leader. _I don't recognise your species. What system do you come from?_ he'd asked both times. She was curious about how UNIT's translator had come to be programmed with Jack's 'galactic standards', but she bet Jack knew. Gwen had resolved to see if he'd tell her when they got out of this.

Now she stalked the seven by seven area of the confinement, wondering how the aliens would see her behaviour--a caged tiger looking for an out, ready to pounce on whatever happened by? She remembered childhood trips to the zoo--did the aliens have zoos?--and the big predators that tracked never-ending circuits in their pens. But, no, with the size of these aliens, she wouldn't be a tiger to them. More like a monkey--and a small, funny, chattering one at that. The creature that had captured Jack hadn't appeared threatened by her at all.

Gwen sighed and stretched, willing the tension in her shoulders to ease, her fingers brushing the metallic mesh above her. The terror that had spiked when she'd seen that thing with its claws on Jack had receded during the last few hours, leaving only a hardened knot in her stomach. That sickening but, she was proud to say, controlled panic had given way to gnawing worry.

She checked the translator's progress--again. It was the only thing she could do, after all. It was still plugging away, calmly and confidently counting down the hour to what could prove to be the most momentous negotiations she'd ever undertaken in her life--the negotiation for her and Jack's freedom. But more. The establishment of hopefully friendly diplomatic relations with an alien species--from another planet--was a far cry from talking a junkie down from an overpass.

_From another planet._ The realisation was a bit staggering. She knew that was what Torchwood was about. She'd read the case reports, handled the artefacts that even the most advanced human science was at a loss to explain, but actually seeing it firsthand and in person was something completely different.

_Pull yourself together_, she ordered herself, blowing out a breath. The fairly recent past had been a time for accepting a lot of things that until now had confined themselves to the science fiction programmes Grant liked: ghosts who turned out to be metal men from an alternate reality--so that was robots and parallel worlds for the list; aliens, with the hostile Sycorax ship over London last winter... Yet, somehow, the idea of an alien ship over London wasn't the same as green-and-scaly-and-two-feet-away aliens. Add to the top of that pile the apparent reality of time-travel in the form of the Doctor character that formed the Torchwood Institute's other obsession and you had almost every sci-fi plotline ever written.

Gwen gave a thought to Grant. She'd promised to ring him, knew he worried when he didn't hear from her. Though imprisonment by aliens would count as an extenuating circumstance. And, to be honest, right now she was worried about herself too. The worst part was going to be having to explain to him that she couldn't explain to him, that everything that'd kept her from contacting him was classified to the highest level.

She sat down once more, knowing in the back of her mind she'd be pacing again soon, wondering how Jack was faring. Probably a lot better than she was, just judging by the way he'd faced the aliens. He knew what the stuff in this lab was and thought he could figure out how to get an alien ship running again. That could be all bluster, but she was pretty sure it wasn't. And he'd been able to _talk_ to them, if only a few words. More Jack Harkness mysteries that made her contemplate wanting to lock him into an interrogation room again. What had he done in his past that made him so bloody good at this?

From the tales she'd been able to gather, he hadn't been with Torchwood for much longer than she had. If the stories were to be believed, he'd simply turned up one day with all the right authorisations and blessings and took charge.

Suddenly feeling the need for some reassurance, for someone to talk to, Gwen was going to call out to him. Before she could, she was interrupted by the appearance of one of the aliens--the one Jack had referred to as the 'looker', she realised. Smaller than the rest, the creature's skin was a darker, dustier shade of tannish-green while the others were brighter in their colouring. The biology she'd had in school kicked in. Smaller and plainer typically meant female, at least in Earth species. Did that apply anywhere else?

Gwen watched curiously as it--she?--busied itself at one of the work-surfaces for a short time, its movements surprisingly dainty, the long, clawed fingers rather dextrous. With sidelong glances, the alien watched her just as curiously for a few minutes as it made the rounds, caring for the caged animals.

Soon it turned to Gwen and approached with something that looked like a beaker clasped in its hands. It kept its motions slow and deliberate as if it were afraid it would frighten her. Gwen recalled the way she had flinched away when it had first touched her. It had found her as fascinating as she found it now, but it was clear the alien also knew that it had scared her then. So Gwen stayed where she was as it neared.

It offered the beaker to her through the pass-through opening in the cage door. Gwen stood and took it gingerly, sniffing the contents. And the creature said something that it took her a moment to recognise as the mangled word 'water'. She dipped her head in appreciation and pronounced the word clearly for the creature. "Water."

It made a strange little noise and tried the word again, the result much clearer this time. "Yes, that's it," Gwen praised it, smiling. Still leery, she dunked a finger into the vessel, testing the contents before taking a small sip. Once she did, the alien seemed pleased and wandered back to its work.

"Thank you," she said to its retreating back. It regarded her for a moment over its shoulder and went back to its duties. Taking care of lab specimens she understood, even if she rather feared she was one of them. Her mind drifted back to the dissection table for an instant. But right now, the creature was working with tools and equipment whose purposes were a great deal more obscure to her.

"Fox Mulder, eat your heart out," she muttered to herself as she sat back down on the mattress to one side of the cage floor. The alien glanced up, eventually giving her an encouraging sound when she didn't say anything further. Was she supposed to keep talking? "Mind you, I only watched the show because I happened to fancy David Duchovny at the time. Thought it was complete rubbish. Proved me wrong, didn't they."

It continued with what it was doing, but spared her a look every now and then as if it were interested in her speech. She had what she supposed was an appreciative audience, so she talked to it about nothing at all for a long while, simply filling the space with her own voice and feeling marginally better for it. Knowing that the creature really didn't understand her apart from a few scattered words, she was beginning to understand why people talked to their pets. Although in her current position she was definitely the pet.

When the tablet PC beeped unexpectedly, she jumped, uncomfortably aware that the creature had swung around, alarmed by the sound, its head cocked; she was now at the centre of its full and undivided attention. Her gaze never leaving the alien, Gwen fumbled a little for the translator. Glancing down at the device in her lap, she saw that a new status window had appeared on the screen.

_Matrix compilation complete._

The alien was moving toward her now, staring at her piercingly, warily eyeing the translator in her hands. _Here goes nothing_, Gwen thought to herself.

"Do you understand me?" she asked it. After a half-second's delay, the translator emitted a disjointed string of sounds, obviously pieced together from the conversations it had recorded, and sounding only vaguely like the alien's language to her ears. She hoped it was close enough.

The creature looked taken aback for an instant before answering.

_(you have?) a translation. not before why_, the screen read. It was working. A sense of soaring elation displaced her worry, and she wanted to hug the UNIT team that had created it. Barring that, she vowed to send a long letter of thanks if she could find her way to an address for the appropriate parties.

"I couldn't use it before--the translator. It just finished."

It cocked its head again, seeming to concentrate on deciphering the machine's translation, and spoke. _(?) bad translation. word required is (finished/done?)_

Gwen was confused for a moment until she realised that the translator had quite probably spit out nonsense, but the alien had been able to figure out what she meant and had given her the right word, which the translator noted and used to improve the translation matrix. She had the feeling that for a while yet she'd be reading between the lines as the database was refined.

She needed to get to Jack, but the alien was talking excitedly as it went to pick something up from a nearby worktable. _(imperative?) go to (Name2--untranslatable). he is (commander/master)_

Gwen shook her head. "I'd like to see to my partner first...if possible." She didn't have any idea how much leeway she would be allowed, whether or not her requests would be listened to.

The alien returned to the cell door, unlocking it with the flat object it'd used to secure it earlier. _we will go to your mate._

She chuckled a little at substitution of 'mate' for 'partner' and at the thought of Jack in that role in her life. The alien was giving her what she assumed was a quizzical look. "Bad translation," she told it.

oOoOo

Talking to Doug and Mike had yielded no more clues as to the aliens' intent. Jack still had nothing more to go on than his own assumptions and observations. He did, however, find out that he and Gwen had come in the hard way though the mine. There was an entrance to the cave that didn't require climbing gear to negotiate not far from the mine entrance, closer to the ship. Then of course, the fact that he and Gwen hadn't come in that way had probably kept them from being captured earlier. From their story, his cellmates had been descended upon almost immediately.

But, by their own admission, they'd been treated all right, provided with food and water. Scared, but unharmed.

Jack paced, unable to settle. He hated this kind of thing, the sit-around-and-wait scenario; always had. It was this kind of thing that, in his Agency days, would have had him getting friendly with the nearest willing participant--if not, as he preferred, physically, then talking to them, drawing out as much of someone's life story as he could, wooing their trust and honing the knife's edge of his persuasive charm. Unconsciously practising to be the con man he became after his spectacular resignation from the Time Agency after they wiped out a couple of years' worth of his memories.

It was also a game that he was in no mood to play right now. He'd been too terse with his information-gathering, prodded too hard for details. Anticipation, apprehension and fatigue kept him abnormally tight-lipped. And he knew full well that he'd probably garnered something of an unfavourable, if not unfriendly, opinion in the minds of his fellow captives.

Jack sensed that he could win Doug over in a heartbeat, despite his offhand treatment. Instinct and experience told him that the guy was the type to fall open like a book under the gentlest inveiglement. Mike would be a harder sell. After Jack's harsh words earlier, dashing the kid's initial idea that their rescue would be soon, the young man had been regarding Jack with an increasingly distrustful expression, closing himself off, his answers becoming less and less helpful. It was something Jack would deal with later if he had to.

He regretted that decision sooner than expected when the forceful impact of a body into his back shoved and tried to hold him against the mesh. Defence training made his response automatic, getting his hands down first, muscles coiling to slam back and throw off his attacker. Part of his mind registered Doug's horrified "Mike!"

Free of the hold, Jack whipped around with a furious "What the hell do you--" And froze as he found himself staring down at a stunned-looking Mike Westman on the ground on his back; Jack's gun was in the kid's slightly shaking hands. He swore reflexively under his breath, putting his hands out slowly, keeping them in sight in front of him.

"Mike, give me the gun back," Jack said, taking a tentative step toward the young man. He stopped when the weapon's aim solidified on him.

"What're you going to do with that?" he asked, feigning a calmness that he didn't feel. Inside he seethed with self-recrimination. He'd been irresponsible and careless, underestimated the threat posed by two frightened, stupid kids barely out of their teens. Mike was getting to his feet, his gaze and the gun's aim never leaving Jack, never giving Jack an opening. "You planning to shoot me?"

Doug, who'd been agape with shock at his friend's reckless manoeuvre, found himself and hissed to Mike. "What you doing? God, just give it back to him."

"Shut it, Dougie! We're getting out of here," Mike declared with the certainty of the desperate and the insane. "Now."

"And how are you going to do that?" Jack asked critically, immensely grateful that the kid didn't know that he could open the cell door. If he could keep the guy talking, he might get an opportunity to disarm him, preferably without getting shot in the process. Doug was keeping himself well out of the way, terrified by the sudden turn of events. _Smart kid._

"We're _sick_ of waiting for you to make a move." Mike waved the gun in a wide, sweeping arc to punctuate his frustration, but too soon pointed it back at Jack. "You've had your chance. Now I don't want to shoot you. But if you aren't going to help out, you can bloody well stay out of the way!"

Well, it was nice to know he wasn't an intended target, but the subject was moot considering the weapon was still aimed at his chest. Jack made a placating gesture. "We _will_ get out of here. Just--"

"Fuck, yeah, we will. Just as soon as one of those _things_ sticks its ugly nose in here." Jack wanted to shake his head. Another kid who'd seen too many movies, who had no clue how things worked for real. He could really begin to hate this century's entertainment industry. His heart already pounding wildly--with good reason, he found that Mike's crazed tone unnerved him too, and the hope of talking him down was scattering like so much dust in the wind. The guy was mad and was going to get someone killed or, worse, end up starting an interplanetary conflict that could only end badly for Earth.

Suddenly, something else grabbed his attention, something that added a whole new dimension of thorniness to the already dire situation. He was sure he'd heard alien voices outside the chamber, approaching. And without speaking their language, he had no way to warn them before they walked into danger.

oOoOo

A raised voice from the cavern ahead made Gwen pause. Her alien escort looked at her questioningly. "I don't like the sound of that," she told it as another angry outburst echoed down the passage. "We'll hold here until we figure out what's happening," she told it. The creature waited for the translation and trilled something that sounded like agreement.

She listened intently, trying to catch the gist of the conversation. "Listen, you really want to think about this," Jack was saying. His voice was deadly calm, but there was a strain in it that many people would miss completely. From that alone, Gwen knew he was in a position he wasn't sure he'd be able to gain control of. And if there was anything she'd found that could rattle an otherwise unflappable Jack Harkness, it was losing control of a situation.

"C'mon, Mike," Jack cajoled. "Okay, if you won't reconsider your plan, would you at least quit pointing the gun at me? It's getting old..."

Gun. She missed the rest of what Jack said, but she really couldn't ask for any more obvious evidence than what she'd heard. "Trouble," she said to the alien, putting the translator into its hands to hold for the time being. "Stay here." Unholstering her own weapon, she began to creep forward. She needed a vantage point, needed to be able to assess the scene.

The creature stopped her, blocking her path, its tone distressed. Gwen put a hand out to it. 'Danger' was the only word she could make out from her quick glimpse of the device's screen. "It's all right. It's my job to deal with dangerous situations, to protect people." Very reluctantly, the alien moved aside, and she was allowed to move forward again, coming to the mouth of the tunnel. She'd have to break cover to get a look into the room.

Staying low and in the shadow, she threw a glance into the room, noting everyone's position, before ducking back. No one faced her direction. Jack and the blond with the gun both had their sides to her. The brown-haired caver held position behind the gunman. Only one weapon in sight.

Steeling herself, drawing a deep breath, she darted into the room toward a narrow column of limestone a short distance to the right of the passage opening. It would serve as barely adequate cover, but it was the only option within reach.

"Armed officer! Drop the gun and get down on the floor!" she ordered, her own weapon trained on the gunman, the sharp staccato of her shout ringing through the chamber. Instantly, the blond swung around and scuttled back a few feet to the furthest wall of the confinement, aiming the gun in her direction instead. By dropping back, the guy still had Jack in front of him, still had him as a potential target should Jack try anything.

Time had slowed to a crawl, and some remote part of her brain pointlessly logged how tired that cliché was. "You drop yours and come out," he shouted back.

The man was in his early twenties at most, Gwen guessed--same age as the lanky guy next to him. She hadn't had a good look at them before; her own fear at the time had shamefully taken the fore. Both were haggard and unshaven, clothes and faces grimy from two days underground. And she didn't care at all for the maniacal, almost feral, glint in the blond's eyes.

"Gwen, don't fire!" Jack shouted to her. "Doug, get down." The gunman's petrified friend fell to his knees, hands out, removing himself as a threat. "Michael, _please_ give me the gun. C'mon, trust me, you really don't want to do this," he coaxed.

_Don't get any nearer, Jack_, she pleaded silently. Gwen swore to herself that she wasn't going to lose another partner if it was within her power. In her mind, the image of Jack superimposed itself onto the haunting image of Jacob's death; she forced it away instantly. She knew she'd fire if the gunman threatened Jack again. But if Jack got any closer...

"Drop it," she ordered again. "Hands where I can see them." The gun pointed at her, it clicked that, as afraid as she'd been of the aliens, the only real danger here was posed by members of her own species.

"Oh, god, just do it, Mike! Just drop it already!" Doug on the floor beseeched. His voice trembled as much as he was. _Yeah, c'mon and listen to your friend. Show a little sanity here._

Mike's attention wavered to his friend for the barest moment, his resolve eroding very slightly under new uncertainty. And Jack was on him, twisting the gun out of the young man's hands, neatly disarming him.

As if the weapon were the only thing holding him up, the guy crumpled bonelessly to the ground. On his hands and knees, head down, his posture was one of supreme anguish and a wordless sob wracked his body.

Breathing the relieved sigh that she was sure was shared by everyone, Gwen lowered the Glock's muzzle to the floor and raked a hand over her forehead and scalp. She squeezed her eyes shut and tugged at her plaited hair, needing to feel something beyond the yawning gulf of numbness left within her in the wake of extreme apprehension and anxiety.

"Safety was still on," Jack stated flatly, holstering the weapon. His own relief was written in every line of his body. She could only nod, safetying and reholstering her own gun. Her heart was still pounding, her breathing as ragged as if she'd just run ten miles.

Unable to make her body respond, she watched Jack use his remarkable wrist device to unlock his cell door and secure it again behind him while he regarded her with a concerned expression.

"We could've walked out of here all along?" Doug gaped at him in gobsmacked amazement from his place on the ground where he tried to console the whimpering Mike.

"Yeah, but for right now I think we're all better off if he"--Jack nodded to Mike--"stays in there for a while longer. Don't you?" Doug hesitated, then nodded, acknowledging the logic. Jack crouched for a second beside the cage door. "Look after him for a while, Doug. There'll be some ruffled feathers over this." He stood and crossed to her.

"You okay?" he asked, putting his hands on her upper arms.

"Fine. Just fine." After the harrowing experience, his proximity was a comfort, but she stopped short of hugging him, not sure that it would be entirely appropriate. Jack didn't share her doubts and resolutely pulled her into a tight embrace. Gwen sagged into it, wrapping her arms around his middle, glad he was safe. "Nice move getting the gun," she mumbled against his shoulder, "but if you do anything like that again, I'll kill you myself."

He chuckled, but an instant later, his body stiffened under her hands. He released his hold on her. "Get behind me," he murmured to her, his gaze fixed on a point behind her. She turned to see what he had, and he pulled at her, putting himself between her and the large, very angry-looking alien.

oOoOo

He heard Gwen draw a sharp breath, and she gripped at the back of his jacket. "Not good," she breathed.

The male alien had obviously come to check what all the hoopla was about. Seemed he wasn't too happy that the mice had slipped their cages, and Jack realised he hadn't had the chance to wonder how Gwen'd got out. Now was not the time to ask her either, as the alien stalked them, outraged aggression etched into every movement.

"Gwenny, back away--slowly. Don't run and don't threaten him. I'll handle this," he said quietly without looking at her. He fiercely hoped he wasn't committing suicide here, but he wanted to show the alien that, despite being loose from the cell, he didn't intend to escape. At the same time, he didn't want Gwen in the strike path should that not appease the creature.

Her hand had barely left him when he was set upon by the alien. With force enough to dash the breath from his lungs, he was driven to the rough stone floor of the cavern. The creature held him there, kneeling over him, one hand holding him there with a painful amount of pressure. Jack struggled to draw breath in anything more than shallow, laboured pants.

He had hit the ground and Gwen had cried out, driving at the alien apparently trying to get it off of him. The rash move was doomed to failure, and one minor swipe from the alien's thickly muscled arm was enough to throw her off and send her staggering backward. He wanted desperately to order her to stop--there was a slim chance she'd listen if only he could get the air needed to speak. A few more seconds and the grey tinge that was already forming at the edges of his vision, he knew, would swamp him and he'd pass out if he didn't get the brute off his chest. But fighting against the alien was useless and would get him injured worse.

As if he were watching a vid running at half speed, he saw Gwen try again, sounds coming to him as though filtered through water. This time she too was knocked to the ground a few metres from where she'd started. He panicked momentarily when she went down, but she got to her feet again.

There was shouting; he could swear there were new voices in the room, too. He was almost beyond caring, though, oxygen starvation eating away at his consciousness as agonisingly slow seconds ticked by.

Miraculously, the weight constricting his lungs lightened some. A few long moments passed and the darkness began to recede. The alien was still there, but its attention was on something on the far side of the room. Jack squirmed a little to try to suss out what was happening. As soon as he tried to move, the crushing pressure was back. This time, he had enough air in his lungs to cry out involuntarily as the renewed pain caught him off guard.

Gwen's anguished "Jack!" met his ears and she appeared in his field of vision. She cast a wary glance at the male alien, but, to his immense surprise, it didn't stop her from getting close this time. It watched her, its black gaze forbidding as she kneeled beside him. Her expression was pleading as she looked back at the alien. And Jack was at a loss to explain what had changed in those few seconds that she was allowed to approach.

One new voice said something in the aliens' language and the huge, scaled hand on his chest was lifted.

"Thank you," Gwen said to the male, and it replied with a dispassionate grunt. It moved to crouch nearby, staying within reach in case they tried to escape, he assumed. "Are you all right?" Her brown eyes brimmed with concern.

"Just about," he gasped. "Knocked the wind out of me." Eyes on the creature, he tried to sit up. Gwen's hand on his shoulder kept him where he was.

"Rest a minute. We're okay." She glanced around, and Jack followed her gaze. The female was standing not far away. So, she was the one who had come to his rescue the last time.

The two aliens held a conversation over their heads, the subject a matter of great dispute by the sound of it. Jack imagined that it was probably about what was going to happen to him and Gwen.

Then he remembered something. "How'd you get out?"

Gwen suddenly smiled the beautiful smile that it was too tempting to wish she reserved only for him. "The translator's working. That one let me out and we were on our way to come and get you before we went to see their leader." Sure enough, Jack now realised the tablet PC was in the female alien's hands. The other voice he'd heard had to have been the translator.

In spite of the excellent news, his guilt resurfaced. "But my carelessness aided Mikey over there's grand scheme and messed that one up," he said bitterly.

"What happened?" As expected, a direct question from the detective.

He took a deep breath--still hurt a bit to do that--and struggled to sit up, accepting the hand Gwen offered. "Kid tackled me from behind and grabbed my sidearm in the process. I _should've_ seen it coming, should've anticipated it. Should never've turned my back."

Gwen shook her head. Her reply was gentle yet mildly chiding. "Can't be paranoid every minute, Jack. Never let your guard down and, eventually, it falls down on its own."

His comment about paranoia keeping him alive this long never got made as the female alien beckoned Gwen over. Jack suppressed the urge to latch on and keep her where she was as with a squeeze of his shoulder she was gone.

He tried to keep the distrust he felt from showing on his face as he watched them talk via the translator. The male simply looked on stonily. It felt to Jack that he didn't have any more confidence in the situation than Jack did.

But Gwen soon returned to his side. "You think you can walk?"

"Yeah." Without giving her time to react, he was already getting to his feet, hiding his reaction to the twinge of discomfort caused by it, ignoring the way Gwen's brow furrowed when he didn't quite manage it. "Don't really fancy him carrying me," he explained, nodding to the male. "What did she tell you?"

Gwen didn't appear angry, more irked. "They're going to lock us up again." She held up a hand for silence when he opened his mouth. "Just until they can check with their leader." She added, "Go with it, I'll explain later," in a low murmur.

Jack eyed the cage. Doug was virtually pressed against the front of it, fingers in the mesh, observing the whole scene with a nervous avidity. Mike sat at the back of the confinement, knees draw up and hugged to his chest; he stared hollowly at the floor in front of him. He was completely passive. Nothing showed to indicate he even knew what was going on.

If he was going back in, Jack decided, the .38 was staying out here. He was about to undo the first catch on his gun-belt when Gwen laid a hand on his forearm. A tip of her head indicated a direction opposite the cage. The motions of the two aliens--the female ahead of them toward the tunnel, the male rising and waiting a small distance from them to follow--seemed to coincide with the direction Gwen wanted him to go, so he followed.

The passage soon widened into the lab that Gwen had told him about, a confinement area similar to the one he'd been locked in set up to one side, Gwen's backpack on its floor. Reminded, he did a quick mental inventory of his own pack's contents still back with Doug and Mike. He couldn't come up with anything he should worry about the two young men getting their hands on. With all that had transpired, Gwen had ended up carrying most of the valuable or classified equipment. His own pack only had the remaining climbing gear and rope, some water, a few energy bars and a couple of other odds and ends.

Once the door had been locked behind them, the male alien relaxed some but still radiated displeasure. The female was looking deeply apologetic again, and the male barked a terse comment at her and stalked off.

She watched him go and then hastily turned to Gwen, speaking quickly and quietly, handing her the translator through the opening in the mesh of the cell door. Gwen read the screen and pushed the device back through the door. "It's okay. Go," she told the alien, and it hurried off, translator cradled in its arms.

"Quite the girls' club you've got going here." He couldn't keep himself from smirking. "Do I get to play?"

But Gwen was all business. "She's going to take the translator and try to convince the leader to listen to us. The other one's obviously not happy about any of it, and doesn't trust us."

"Okay. But why lock us up again? They must know we can get out."

"She does. I told her to stay back until the danger had passed--and she did until the other one showed up and pinned you--" Gwen disregarded his dry "Unlike someone I know," and went on. "So she knows you got out on your own, but she's covered for us and told the big one that she let us both out. Explained to him about the translation and going to talk to their leader. That's what got him to stop suffocating you."

He nodded. "I'll have to thank her." Gwen had found them an ally. He only hoped the older alien would be as reasonable as Gwen's friend.

Her expression no-nonsense, she looked at him then and said, "Jack, I know you're going to take this the wrong way, but I want to see your chest." Quick laughter bubbled up inside him, but it turned into a gasp when he forgot his recently crushed torso. Worry softened her expression and she went to retrieve a small first-aid kit from her pack. "C'mon. I need to check your damage."

Without further comment from either of them, she helped him out of his jacket, shirt and t-shirt. His chest was going blossom into a massive contusion in a few hours, and Gwen told him his back probably wouldn't be much better. "Feel like you've cracked any ribs?" she asked as she lightly probed his injuries, her fingers cold from the cave's chilly ambient temperature.

He shivered slightly as much from her touch as the cold air. "Doesn't feel like it. Only bruised."

Gwen noticed his reaction. "Sorry about the cold. We'll get you dressed again after I wrap your chest," she said, opening the med-kit. "If the ribs aren't broken, some compression might make it easier for you to move, maybe help you remember not to overdo."

"You don't need to be in such a hurry to cover me up, you know." He grinned flirtatiously at her in an attempt to get her to stop looking so grim. He really was fine. He'd had bedroom encounters that had left him more roughed up. Granted, at least one of those times involved a jealous lover and a twenty-seventh century, low-power concussion grenade and the other--well, that was just dumb luck and alcohol. "I can stand a little cold if you want more time...looking."

Gwen found the rolled elastic bandage she'd been rummaging for and rose to give his cheek and affectionately cool 'yes, dear' pat. "I've seen enough. And you've been prettier, I'm sure." Jack was glad to see a small smile appear.

"That I have," he agreed. "But I am all right, Gwen. Really."

She didn't respond to that, instead telling him to take a breath and hold it. He grimaced a little when she pulled the bandage snug across his ribs. Gwen frowned. "You sure they don't feel broken?"

"Yeah, had a few in my day. I know what they feel like."

A minute later, she secured the wrap. "Okay?"

He moved experimentally, finding the bandage did help. "Great. Thanks." And she handed him his t-shirt.

Once he had finally shrugged into his jacket, she dropped two paracetamol into his hand and stuffed the bottle into his pocket, handing him a half-full water bottle. "Don't have anything stronger, I'm afraid."

"This'll do. Thanks again."

He'd barely swallowed the tablets when the female alien appeared at the tunnel opening. She crossed quickly to unlock the cell door, saying something to them in her fluting language; he could guess at the gist of it. The door open, she gave the translator to Gwen, who read the text.

"Showtime?" Jack asked.

Gwen gave him a nod. "Showtime."


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Before we go, I want to find out a thing or two," Jack said, placing his hand over Gwen's on the translator to steady it so he could look at the screen. "I'm guessing you didn't come to this planet on purpose. Something happened to your ship, right? You were forced to land?"

The alien made the shrugging motion Gwen had started to associate with an affirmative response; she figured it was the equivalent of a nod.

_yes. power system (accident/death?)_, appeared.

Jack glanced at the words and strode out of the cell, over to what he had named as a phasic energy converter. She noted that his usual fluid grace was hampered some by his now restricted range of motion, but she was happy to see him moving better. The way he carried himself as they walked to the lab had been painful for her to see. Her subsequent look his injuries equally so.

He tapped at device's flat metallic surface. "Do you know if this converter is the only problem with the ship?" he asked the alien.

The alien replied to him. "No, she doesn't," Gwen read out to Jack.

He examined the converter closely for a moment. "The cowling's loose. You tried to fix it?"

The creature shrugged its nod-equivalent. _(Name4--untranslatable) examined it. damage (exceeded?) him._ She wuffled nervously as if she weren't comfortable as Jack prised up the cowling.

Jack noticed and stopped, taking his hands off the converter. "It's okay. I only want to take a peek," he said, his voice soothing.

Looking to Gwen seemingly in search of guidance, the alien relaxed when she put out a hand to her. "It'll be fine. He wants to see if he can fix it," she told the creature. The amount of trust she seemed willing to extend made Gwen revise her estimation of the creature's age. She wasn't sure, but right now Gwen had the feeling she was barely past adolescence.

_he can repair?_ was the immediate response.

"It's possible. Can he look?" With the alien's apparent assent, Jack went back to the covering. The alien moved closer to observe. Also moving closer, Gwen related the translation to him. "I think the male--unhelpfully, the translator only calls him Name4," she scoffed. "She says he took a look, but didn't have the knowledge to fix it."

The alien responded. _(Name4--untranslatable)_

It took her an instant to catch on. "That's his name, is it? _Jooloss?_" she said, trying to mimic the sounds the creature had made.

Plainly not satisfied with her pronunciation, the alien said it again. Still working at the converter cover, Jack spoke up. "It's a softer sound, Gwen. More sibilant--think French. Zhuluss." Gwen repeated it and got a pleased look from the alien.

Jack smiled his captivating smile and said to the alien, "You'll have to forgive me, but, with everything going on, I haven't asked _your_ name. I'm Jack." The alien cocked her head in puzzlement. Jack's smile widened. "Yeah, I know it translates funny." He paused to let the translator finish. "Jack," he said again to let the creature hear the word as he pronounced it.

"Saalenu." _(Name1--untranslatable)_, the translator confirmed.

She felt a bit guilty that introductions hadn't been made much earlier, yet, as Jack said, the opportunity hadn't presented itself until now. "I've also been remiss. Gwen," she told Saalenu.

"Gwen. Jack." Saalenu parroted, having a little trouble getting the harder sounds in Jack's name right.

Jack chuckled and winked. "Don't worry about it. I've been called worse." His expression grew nostalgic. "And on one quite memorable occasion, even answered to Squiffy." Gwen didn't get the chance to comment as the cowling finally came off. Jack set it to the side with a low whistle. "Bet this was exciting when it blew."

Gwen stepped nearer, raising herself up on her toes to get a look down inside the device. She was immediately hit by the acrid smell of burning. It made her nose twitch. The inside showed extensive charring, the housing blackened, once multicoloured wiring greyed and muted by its soot coating. To her untrained eye, the damage seemed irreparable.

"It's bad, isn't it?"

"Fixed worse," Jack declared. Gwen was surprised and still quite eager to know where and when Jack had fixed said worse, but said nothing. She added it to the mental tally of questions to get him to answer someday. He poked experimentally at an exceptionally melted section, getting soot on his fingers and his jacket sleeve in the process. "Not, I'll admit, with early twenty-first century materials and tech. But if they've got a halfway decent tool kit with them..." He trailed off and Gwen was startled as Saalenu trilled excitedly when she caught up with the translation. He grinned at her. "Yeah, I think we can get you out of here."

Jack had to fend off an overly enthusiastic attempt at an embrace by Saalenu then, saying "Easy! Easy there," and backing away a step. Saalenu paused, embarrassed or crestfallen by the rejection, and Jack hurried to explain, seeing the alien's discomfiture. "Now, you have to know, normally I'd jump at the chance of a hug from someone as pretty as yourself, but your big friend didn't exactly do my ribs any favours earlier. So I'm just saying gently, okay?"

Gwen had to smile and almost laugh as Jack's six-foot frame was dwarfed and wrapped in Saalenu's cautious embrace.

"Which reminds me," he said when he was released, "I wanted to thank you for cutting in back there and keeping my hide in one piece." He turned on that brilliant smile again, and Saalenu trilled with a small shunning gesture, her posture suddenly somewhat bashful. _Another woman falls to Jack's wiles_, Gwen thought wryly.

Saalenu gestured toward the tunnel. _(imperative/must) we go._

Looking to Jack, Gwen translated, "Time to go. Got what you needed?"

"Yeah, let's go see what the rest of our audience thinks about getting off this planet."

oOoOo

Gwen wasn't sure how things were going to go as they made their way from the laboratory to the large living chamber. Her outlook didn't improve any when they arrived.

Zhuluss was there, still looking gruff and untrusting. It was clear he didn't hold much liking for her or Jack, and his fondness for Saalenu didn't appear to be very high either. _you were to release one_, was snapped at her when he turned around and caught sight of Gwen and Jack preceding her.

Gwen moved to defend Saalenu, but the weight of Jack's hand on her shoulder stopped her. "What's done is done. We're both here now," he put forth calmly. "So now that we are, why don't we try the whole introduction thing again? It was a little...constrained before with the language barrier, and all." Gwen marvelled. He could've been arbitrating one of Cary and Owen's petty conference room disputes rather than addressing a noticeably ill-tempered alien, half-again his size.

Zhuluss's stance didn't soften any, but Jack persevered. "I'm Jack Harkness. My colleague--"

The leader's commanding voice echoed from across the wide room. _(Name4--untranslatable) allow them approach._ Gwen tipped the screen to show Jack, and Saalenu bustled past them, intense irritation radiating from her as she physically brushed past Zhuluss, forcing him to take a step back.

Gwen tried to emulate Jack's masterfully-crafted mask of neutrality as she met Zhuluss's baleful gaze when she and Jack passed him, following Saalenu.

Approaching the elder alien still tucked up in his improvised bed, Saalenu started talking excitedly, trying to relate her annoyance with Zhuluss's behaviour, and was silenced by a firm statement. _(Name1--untranslatable) be at (peace/ease?). (?) these._ In her mind, Gwen translated the first part of that as "Calm down," something her somewhat excitable new friend probably heard a lot.

Saalenu ducked her head once. _master (Name2--untranslatable)_, she acknowledged, tempering her previous rant.

During this exchange Jack and Gwen had kept quiet, watching the translation, waiting for their opportunity. The leader's attention now focussed on them and Saalenu gestured to him, saying "Belanal" to them. _(Name2--untranslatable)_ She then turned to introduce them, speaking their names to Belanal.

From his place by Gwen's side, Jack greeted the alien. "An honour, sir. Thank you for taking time to listen to us."

_want what here_

"Believe it or not, we want to render whatever assistance we can. Initially, our purpose was investigative--to find out your intentions. We had to make sure you weren't hostile. It's since become obvious that you're on this planet unintentionally, so our aim is to help if possible."

_no (harm/hurt). (?) and ship damaged. (sent?) contact with (home/house?). waiting_

Jack scowled at the tablet PC in her hands, puzzled, and Gwen wondered if the translation going the other way was as vague and broken. She put forward her guess at the meaning. "You've got a rescue coming? Called to get someone to fix the ship?"

_yes. arrive four (time measure--no conversion reference)_

"I've seen the burned out phasic energy converter in the lab," Jack said. "Any other damage to the ship's systems?"

_(believe?) only power system (fail?)_

"Okay, here's the thing," Jack explained. "I think I can fix that converter and get you on your way long before your rescue arrives."

Belanal perked up sharply, surveying Jack with new intensity. Gwen cast a quick glance over her shoulder. Zhuluss was no less interested.

_you can repair converter?_ Belanal asked.

"Everyone seems so shocked by that." Underneath his mild tone, Gwen was sure Jack exulted in the revelation. For someone who spent so much time sidestepping questions about himself, he did have a certain love for being the centre of attention.

"But there's something else you should know." Jack glanced at his wristcomputer as he talked. "We don't have much time before someone comes looking for Gwen and me. And those two kids you've been holding already have others looking for them." He was right; the police search for Doug and Mike should have started by now, and she and Jack had made none of their scheduled check-ins. She'd worry less about Torchwood personnel showing up if only there was some way to let them know the aliens were friendly. Jack went on, "Now, I know the only reason you detained us was keep yourselves from being discovered, so the sooner we can get you out of here, the better this will be for everyone. How far out did you say your rescue was?"

_four (time measure--no conversion reference)_ Belanal replied.

She stared at the last line on the translator screen. "Yeah, that's not going to work, is it?" Gwen commented. "Their time system is bound to be completely different from ours."

Jack grinned down at her, clearly in possession of knowledge she wasn't privy to. As usual. He turned back to Belanal. "Can you relate that to the Rilliskcian chronometric standard? I might not know much of the language, but at least I know how to tell time," he said to her. An answer was given, and Jack did a quick mental calculation. "Okay, that converts to about thirteen days."

"So let's hope you really are more than just a pretty face and can do what you said you can," Gwen teased.

"So what do you say, Belanal? Let me try my hand at fixing that converter for you?"

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Belanal conceded. Gwen could tell that Zhuluss remained suspicious. He would undoubtedly supervise Jack closely under the guise of assisting.

oOoOo

Back in the lab, Zhuluss produced a basic tool kit from one of the big grey equipment crates. Starting in on the converter, Jack asked for a mild solvent, something to clean the carbon residue off the surfaces and connections. Saalenu found that for him, and, once he'd assured himself that the chemical wasn't going to damage the components, he set Zhuluss to cleaning each piece as he removed it--if only to keep the guy from hovering.

It took him the better part of two hours to strip down the part and familiarise himself with the design. Even in this time period, phasic energy converters like this one had been around, in one form or another, for a very long time. The design evolved, but the basic concept of operation always remained the same. You didn't screw with something that worked.

Now that he'd gutted the thing, he'd ascertained that the primary system feed had been completely fused and the secondary had malfunctioned, causing the unit to go into shutdown. He couldn't be sure what had caused the primary to fuse, but the converter looked like it had some age on it, so it wasn't unthinkable that it had simply reached its end-of-life at a particularly bad time, forcing Belanal and company to land on Earth. Well, the timing wasn't _that_ bad. The aliens might have ended up stuck out of range of a habitable planet. They could easily have been dead by now, adrift in space, carrion for the salvagers, bastard vultures that they were.

Still, a good service tech should've caught the problem before it came to engine failure in open space. Yet there would always be dishonest or incompetent ship techs out there. Just as there would always be pilots who ignored maintenance schedules, who thought their ship would make that one last run before they needed to have it checked over.

Jack couldn't do anything about the fused primary. Without a better set of tools and a place to get his hands on the advanced materials he needed, the primary was a lost cause. Thank goodness for redundancy. A working secondary would get them halfway across the galaxy, no problem.

Gwen's hand on his upper arm brought him out of his musings about how much of a redesign he should make to boost the part's reliability, weighing time and materials available versus the possibility of their new acquaintances getting out there again and the repair not holding. He absolutely refused to send them out again if it would mean their conceivable death.

"How're you doing?" she asked him.

"Primary's trashed, but we'll definitely be able to get them on their way again with, as a friend of mine used to put it, a little jiggery-pokery." Jack smiled wryly to cover the tiny jab of angst he got even from even the oblique mention of the Doctor.

"Not the repair, Jack. You. How are you holding up? Pain under control?"

He blinked at her. He'd been so wrapped up he'd almost forgotten about it, only the odd wrong twist or long reach reminding him of his bruises. "Just fine," assured her, and he wondered what he'd done to deserve such attention from her. Or maybe she was just making the rounds, playing mother hen. She'd been to check on Mike and Doug earlier. "How are the others? Mike doing any better?" The kid's shell-shocked expression last time Jack had seen him had him a little worried.

"Doug said he got him talking some. He's still pretty despondent. Won't say anything to me yet--of course, staring down a gun at someone isn't the best way to make friends, is it?" She sighed softly, wearily. "They're both bedded down now, trying to catch some kip."

Gwen offered him part of the energy bar she had with her, but, observing his filthy hands, instead broke off a small piece of it and popped it into his mouth.

"Thanks," he mumbled around the bite. It was awful, and it reminded him of the last time he'd eaten anything and how hungry he was. He swallowed and said, "You should think about some sleep, too, while we've got the downtime."

She shook her head and gave him another bite. "Too keyed up to sleep." She retrieved a bottle of water and handed it to him. "Need anything?"

Jack nodded to Zhuluss working diligently at a worktable nearby, surreptitiously eyeing them. "Still got my helper, so I'm good."

"I asked Belanal if I'd be permitted to go to the surface to make our check-in. He wasn't thrilled by the idea. Seems we're trusted as long as we're within sight." She frowned, frustrated. "I couldn't get through to him that we needed to warn our people that they weren't a threat. Lost in the translation or some other difficulty, I don't know."

"If I can't convince you to take a rest, try getting Saalenu to work on him. If it really is a translation problem, maybe she'll understand better and explain it to Belanal. Or maybe she'll be able to explain his qualms to you. Either way, being able to call Bast off remains pretty high on the wishlist."

He would sacrifice having the use of the translator for his task if Gwen could somehow convince the aliens that danger might be on its way. And even if he spoke the aliens' language, Jack believed that it would do little good. The discussion would still be foreign due to Zhuluss's lack of technical knowledge in this area.

"How much time do you think we've got?"

He checked the chronometer. "0437 right now leaves us around five and half hours, assuming the police don't gatecrash before then. The other thing we need to do is see if we can get them packed up and ready to go as soon as I get this installed." He patted the converter housing, now wiped clean of the black grime that covered him instead. "The sooner they're on the ship, the fewer things we have to worry about going wrong."

Absentmindedly, she broke off another piece of the bar and gave it to him. "And how much time until then?"

"To get this done, two...three hours, tops. Another forty-five minutes, an hour to install it and check the power systems on the ship. Give the main systems' panel a once-over while I'm there... We have almost enough time before our guys are due to show up."

"All right." She fed him the last fragment, crumpling the shining Mylar wrapper and shoving it in her jeans pocket. "I'll go find Saalenu, then. See if I can help get them ready to go and ask her to help out with Belanal."

He grinned at her, saluting her with the water bottle as she left. "You know where I'll be." Jack finished the bottle and got back to work.

oOoOo

It was some time later that Gwen was returning to the large living chamber after helping Saalenu while she put things in order for their departure. She was still rather disappointed--vexed might be a better word--that she'd been unable to make any headway toward Belanal allowing her to get out of this cave to call in and let the Institute know what she and Jack had learned about the situation. Even getting Saalenu's assistance in the matter had been difficult. There was yet some barrier to understanding that Gwen hadn't been able to puzzle out or to topple.

At least she'd been able to convey something of the deadline they were dealing with, if not the danger, and the need to get ready to go. Many of the camp's supplies had been gathered and packed into their grey containers. She and Saalenu had left the lab until last to stay out of Jack and Zhuluss's way. Saalenu's animals were left to be released, as well. Secretly, Gwen hoped that would provide her the chance to make her phone call. She wasn't beyond a little subterfuge if it saved these creatures' lives.

The wide cavern had been partially emptied, the big crates stacked beside what she'd been shocked to find out was essentially an anti-gravity pallet truck. Only a small grouping of improvised furniture and equipment was left at the far end of the chamber.

Across the empty space, Gwen spotted Belanal on his feet and hobbling away from his bed. Dashing across to him, worried he'd fall or do more damage to the ugly gash on his thigh by exerting himself, she asked, "Should you be up with your injury?" Reaching his side, she instantly offered her free arm to steady him.

_not going far. healing well_, she read with a glance at the translator in her hand. He indicated a table and seat a few yards away, but Belanal took her offered arm, his green skin cool and leathery on her hand. He made an amused sound. _(students?) (Name1--untranslatable) (Name4--untranslatable) worry much. now you do_, Gwen read once she got him seated.

She smiled crookedly at the accusation. "Zhuluss and Saalenu are your students? You're a teacher?"

Belanal gave the aliens' version of a nod, pointing to a container at the far edge of the work-surface. Gwen got it for him and he started to stow the small delicate-looking instruments on the table into its padded interior, gently batting away her hands when she tried to help.

"Is that where you were headed, a school trip of some kind?" she asked, curious and unsure what to do now that her offer of assistance had been politely rebuffed. She took the seat opposite Belanal as he answered her.

_(?) research (expedition?) (Name12--untranslatable)_ The improvised biology lab made more sense to her now, and the amount of what she'd assumed to be scientific equipment they'd toted down here. They were researchers. So they hadn't intended to land on or study this planet, but, with a month of spare time on their hands and a completely alien environment to explore, they'd done just that.

_ship is old and myself not a good (operator/pilot?)_

Gwen tsked, not willing to let Belanal immerse himself in that kind of guilt. He reminded her of her memory of her grandfather, a big man, stoic and strong, but who always had quick smile and soft word for her. "Oh, now, I'm sure your flying is fine. The converter blew up--and Jack said it looked like it was fairly spectacular when it did--but you got down safely. You and Saalenu and Zhuluss are alive. That's something at least."

"And, as they say on this planet, any landing you can walk away from is a good one," Jack finished, striding across the echoey cavern toward them, looking a bit more than pleased with himself, Zhuluss in his wake. He'd cleaned away most of the black soot from his hands, but his sleeves and jacket front were definitely the worse for wear, and there was still a smudge of black on his forehead that she really wanted to wipe away. "Of course, I've also heard the add-on to that that says, but if you're walking then you've most likely broken the aircraft. But in less than an hour yours shouldn't be broken anymore."

Zhuluss spoke up. _energy converter ready_

Jack leaned over her, hand on her shoulder, to check the display. Beaming, he relied, "Yep, what he said. We're just headed to install it."

_excellent (news/report)_, Belanal congratulated them. He turned to Jack. _our (thanks) to you_

"No problem. Happy to do it. But we are still working under a time constraint here, so if you don't mind, we'll get moving."

Gwen looked to him when he squeezed her shoulder lightly. He wanted a word, so she excused herself from Belanal and followed beside Jack on the way back to the lab. Zhuluss was in a hurry, and Jack dragged his feet, putting some space between the alien and them.

He mimed covering the translator's microphone input and she did. "No luck getting a call out to our guys, I assume," he said in a low voice meant not to be picked up by the translator.

"No, he's being sticky on that one. I hoped for a chance when Saalenu tears down the lab."

He appeared bemused and somewhat dismayed when he drew his conclusion. "Gwen, do _not_ run--"

She stopped him with an imperious wave of her hand. "She said she would let her specimens go. Helping her with that may get me close enough to the surface to get a mobile signal."

His wry smile was amused and approving. "Sneaky--nice. I'll see what I can do, too, while I'm up there. One of us might get to them in time." Jack pulled his mobile from his pocket, giving it a quick check before replacing it. "That is, if they aren't out there already," he added grimly.

oOoOo

Zhuluss was manhandling the bulky converter out of its support stand by the time Jack and Gwen caught up with him. The part wasn't incredibly heavy, but it was about as long as Jack was tall so would have been awkward for him to manoeuvre without banging up the connection ports. Content to let Zhuluss continue, Jack stood back with Gwen and gathered the few tools he still had out, shoving the tool kit under his arm.

"Got it?" he confirmed with the alien. Zhuluss snorted indignantly in response. "All right, then. Lead the way." To Gwen, he said, "Back soon."

"Good luck."

Zhuluss led him from the well-lit areas that the aliens had been inhabiting through unfamiliar, dark passages toward the natural cave entrance that Mike and Doug had talked about. Alien lamp in hand, Jack worked at keeping the path in front of the burdened Zhuluss illuminated. The welcoming sight of daylight appeared ten minutes later and he switched off the light. _Hasn't even been twenty-four hours and it feels like forever since I've seen the sun_, Jack thought. He slipped a hand into his pocket for his phone.

They reached the mouth of the cave. Zhuluss paused and nodded Jack closer to him. "What is it, big fella?" he asked as he approached, leaving hand and phone in his jacket pocket.

Deeming that Jack was close enough, the alien manipulated the small control device that Jack hadn't seen before--something of a difficult move with the converter still in his arms--and Jack looked around the cargo area of a modestly sized spaceship.

"Teleport. Nice," he told Zhuluss, knowing the alien couldn't understand him, but hoping he'd pick up on the impressed tone. Jack had expected something like this, but he thought he'd have a few minutes in the open before they were able to teleport. The ship must have been fairly near to the cave. He left the phone where it was.

He took in the interior with a practised eye. She'd seen some mileage, but the ship was still perfectly serviceable. The small flight deck and living quarters would be through the bulkhead door to his right, meaning the maintenance bay would be to the left. When he opened the door for Zhuluss, he got another wave of the mustiness he associated with close-quarters and reptilian crews. Not an unpleasant odour, but markedly different from that of a human crew.

The air was warm and stale, and it made him rub his nose. Maintaining the smallest possible power signature despite the cloaking field around the ship required that life-support be shut down. No life-support running meant no circulators or air-handlers. And unfortunately, on an interstellar ship, you couldn't just pop a window. Atmospheric seals were expensive and, most of the time, maintenance nightmares, so working ships like this one were usually designed with one crew entrance just behind the flight deck and a larger hatch further back for cargo. The teleport system had likely been installed to save wear and tear on the seals.

Space was tight in the small maintenance bay, and it was cramped with the two of them and the converter in there. Managing not to do themselves or the engine part any damage, they worked together to get the part slotted back into its brackets. Jack tightened the clamps while Zhuluss held it in place. The converter secured, Jack moved on to connecting it into the rest of the power system.

By the time he finished, the temperature had risen a few degrees in the bay, making the stagnant atmosphere even more oppressive. He was sweating in his coat. Removing it, he examined his handiwork once more. At last, he dusted his hands in a theatrical gesture to show Zhuluss he was done.

The alien looked over his work for a few seconds and trilled gleefully, reaching out to pat Jack's head with his huge, clawed hand. "You know, I got a hug from Saalenu," Jack objected with a grin as he smoothed his ruffled hair back down. Stepping out of the way of the door, he pointed in the direction of the flight deck. "Don't keep me in suspense. Go try it out."

Seeming to understand the intent, if not the words, Zhuluss squeezed his bulk past him and hurried out through the cargo hold and crew area to the flight operations area, Jack on his heels. Once there, Zhuluss threw himself into the pilot's chair and started checking the instruments.

Jack could read none of the script, but years of piloting allowed him to recognise many of the controls instinctively. Finding the main maintenance display, he quickly figured out that a blue indicator was good, green not so good and amber was a bad sign. The power system markers were all amber.

With a passionate curse, he slapped the panel with the heel of his hand. It yielded no change in status, but his frustration ebbed a little. He shrugged off Zhuluss's disapproving stare. "You never know, could've been a loose connection." The alien's expression didn't change. "I know, I know," Jack groused and headed back for another look at the power system. "I'm going."

Dragging a hand though his sweat-dampened hair in a distracted gesture, he checked over the phasic energy converter they'd reinstalled. The connections were fine but, laying a hand on it, he found it was cold. His brow creased. By now it should be charged and mildly warm to the touch. There had to be a problem upstream.

Working back from the converter, Jack made a thorough study of each component in the system, checking couplers and relays. Smoke from before had stained the panel above the repaired converter and his hands were black with it again.

"There you are. Thought you'd hide from me, did you?" he admonished the burnt-out linkage he found. He removed it and blew a puff of air through it, examining the seriousness of the failure. His heart fell. The part was shot with no hope of salvaging it.

There was a stores cupboard to one side of the bay. Linkages like these were cheap and only semi-reliable. If he were really lucky, there'd be a spare. Jack twisted the handle and tugged. The locker popped open, the ringing clatter of the thin metal door filling the small compartment as the one corner of it caught momentarily before coming free. And Lady Luck smiled on her favoured son as, at the back of one shelf, he found three shiny new linkages.

He shoved the new one into place and tightened it down. He then paused for a second with his palm pressed against the metal skin of the converter. The barest vibration met his touch, and he knew he'd done it. It had to work this time.

Back on the flight deck, to his relieved delight, the power systems were now showing all blue. Several green flags appeared for various other flight systems and one recalcitrant component insisted on showing one or two intermittent ambers.

Zhuluss started bringing systems online starting with life-support, the air-circulators kicking in with a quiet, steady thrum. And though Jack knew he was imagining it, the air already seemed crisper. Next up were the nav and guidance systems and, ultimately, the engines and thrusters, sending a thrill of low-frequency vibration through the infrastructure and making him yearn just the slightest bit for his space-faring days. One glance back to the solid blue panel confirmed that they had one fully operational ship on their hands.

His relief and satisfaction were dashed when he turned back. Through the forward screen of the ship, he saw a bulk of an off-road vehicle top the rise in the landscape below. He didn't need to see the insignia on the front quarter panel to know that Torchwood had arrived.

Jack swore passionately once again. "He's early," he said to an uncomprehending Zhuluss, pointing out the vehicle on the horizon. The alien sniffed, disconcerted, but continuing to work through the pre-flight. The ship was still cloaked, and Zhuluss appeared to be of the opinion that the interlopers were of no real threat.

Jack, however, knew better, knew that his people had technology enough to find the ship and to bring it down if they wanted. He and Gwen had found it when it was on less than standby power; fully powered for flight, it would be an even easier quarry. The increased power output had to be what drew them here. Otherwise, procedure would have been to start near the mine entrance where Jack had left the Range Rover parked and extend the search from there.

He found his jacket where he'd tossed it across the jump seat and shoved a hand in the pocket for the cell phone. No signal, but he knew there wouldn't be, not in here, not with the defence shielding up.

Jack knew what he had to do. He regretted it, but he'd have to give Zhuluss the slip, somehow intercept the team before things could take a tailspin for the worse. He was certain that wouldn't go over well with Zhuluss; he wasn't really the guy's favourite person. He could tell he wasn't really trusted yet in spite of everything.

Start-up task accomplished, Zhuluss had the teleport control in his hand. Jack stepped closer to his side. And an instant later, they were back at the cave entrance. Desperate, he checked the signal strength again, but the ship's defensive shield was still playing havoc with it, even though he was outside now. He put it away.

Wishing he'd taken the translator from Gwen so Zhuluss had a chance of understanding his motives, Jack said to him, "Sorry about this, but I've got to go." Hoping the big alien would be smart enough to let him go rather than risk exposure, he sprinted out of the cave into the mid-morning sunlight. His goal, the vehicle he'd seen from the ship.

Behind him, Zhuluss trumpeted in outrage, but did not follow.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Gwen paced the floor of the big cavern, which was now completely barren and lit only by two alien lanterns. She'd become accustomed to the hollow echoes of the cave, but now that the darkness pressed in again she once again noticed the sound of the water dripping as it seeped its way through the limestone. She also shivered slightly against the unchanged chill.

Saalenu finished lifting the heavy crates onto the floating transport. Only one remained for Belanal to rest on. All they needed now was word that the converter worked.

She and Saalenu had taken the animal specimens and released them near a natural cave opening. The cages, even the cavers' and her own confinements, had all been collapsed down and neatly stowed away in the grey crates. Unfortunately, Gwen's plan to make the call to the Institute had failed. There'd been no signal for her mobile. It was all up to Jack now.

Doug and Mike sat on the ground nearby, waiting, handcuffed together at the wrist. They'd been released when they promised not to run off and Doug had given her his private pledge that he would do his best to keep Mike in line until they got to the surface. Gwen instinctively trusted Doug, but knew he couldn't stop the other man if he were truly dead-set on flight. Cuffing Doug to Mike provided an additional assurance, if not that Doug could keep Mike in place, that he'd at least slow him down.

A noise down the passage alerted her to Zhuluss's arrival. She turned to see the alien storm across the space toward them, his every motion filled with rage and hostility.

_Something's gone wrong with the ship_, was her first thought. Her mind immediately turned to alternatives and how they were going to keep these people safe for nearly two weeks until their own help arrived. She waited for a few seconds. Jack would explain when he caught up. But Jack wasn't with him. "Zhuluss, where's Jack?"

At the sound of her voice, the huge alien swung his head to glare at her. _fled when others came_, she read a moment before the iron of his grasp closed around her arms, the sudden pain making her cry out in alarm. The wash of icy terror she felt all but blinded her to the fact that the translator had slipped from her hand and clattered to the stone floor.

oOoOo

The exertion of the run made his bruised ribcage protest. Jack tried to ignore it. He had to get to that vehicle, had to find and update Chris Bast.

Coming over a slight hill, he saw a pair of Torchwood's off-road Range Rovers in the distance. As he drew nearer, the uniformed men near them took notice, and one off them set out at a jog to meet him halfway, hand on his pistol as he came. Jack was relieved he hadn't drawn it.

When the young sergeant--Jack thought his name might have been Trent, though he'd never been formally introduced--got near enough, his eyes grew wide with recognition. "Director Harkness? They're looking for you down in the mine, sir."

"Where's Bast?" Jack gasped. Normally the short run wouldn't have winded him, but the pain in his chest was getting to him. It was all he could do not to double over right there.

"Just over the rise, sir. There's a ship--"

Jack made a curt motion to stop him. "Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. Let's go."

Sergeant Trent informed the others via radio. The alien ship wasn't disrupting line-of-sight transmission in that frequency band at least. Bast was there by the time Jack reached the vehicles.

"My god, Jack, it is you. You look like hell."

"Thanks," he answered, pouring a healthy dose of sarcasm into it. But, then again, he probably did look like hell: dirty, sweaty and damn close to dead-tired. What he wouldn't do for a shower and a long rest right about now. Jack sank wearily onto the back of the Range Rover under the open liftgate and fumbled in the pocket of his jacket still clutched in his hand for the paracetamol Gwen had stashed there when she bandaged his chest.

But Bast wasn't listening as he turned and yelled across the moor to the place where Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper presumably had the spectrographic scanner out, making a study of the ship. "Owen!" At the call, Owen dashed toward them.

"Listen to me, Bast. I need you to order a withdrawal from the mine. Get everyone out of that cave now. You got it?" Finding the phial, he snapped it open and swallowed two tablets dry, shoving the bottle back in his pocket.

Bast shook his head apologetically. "I can't do that. You missed your scheduled check-ins. How do we know you haven't been compromised?"

Frustration boiled within him, his reply hot when it came. "Oh, come on! Would you just--"

"You know the policy, Jack," Bast retorted calmly. "You wrote it." His gaze dropped to the .38. "And I'll need to disarm you until we get a scan run."

"Fine," Jack answered, unholstering the revolver and handing it over.

Owen arrived in that moment, taking in Jack's appearance with a professional eye. "What the hell happened to you? Are you injured?" he asked, ducking under the liftgate and going straight for Jack's injured ribs with probing fingers.

Jack pushed away Owen's examination. "I'm fine."

"Liar. Just from the way you're sitting I can tell you're not and your chest's bandaged, so shirt off," Owen ordered.

He gritted his teeth to keep from snapping at the medic. "It's nothing. Bruised and sore, that's all." He sighed. "I promise you can get me naked later, okay? We don't have time right now." Jack looked up at the acting director, willing Bast to believe him. "Chris, please," he pleaded. "I'll..." Jack steeled himself. "...submit to the scan, but just order the withdrawal for me now."

Bast wavered, telling Owen to back off with a tip of his head. "Tell me why." Owen disappeared, presumably to get the neural scanner.

Blowing out a breath and closing his eyes for a second, Jack nodded. "Thanks. We've got something of a diplomatic situation going on down there. And I don't think a squadron of heavily armed and trigger-happy troops coming at them out of the dark is going to help matters."

He had Bast's attention. He really was a good guy, Chris. Despite being with Torchwood since the early seventies when he was recruited from MI-6, the diplomatic solution almost always appealed to him. A reluctant leader, it took a fair amount of cajoling to get Bast to take on acting director, but he was good at it, nonetheless. He preferred to stay on the tech side of things, only taking the role when it was thrust upon him by necessity and only for very short periods, escaping it as soon as humanly possible. Jack would have had no qualms about leaving Bast as his successor, but an official announcement like that would be the fastest way to drive the man out of the organisation and into the retirement he kept talking about. All the better that, with a little more experience, Jack could start using Gwen as his backup. She had the leadership experience and the core team adored her. She only needed some more familiarity with Torchwood operations.

"Three alien life-forms--_non-hostile_, reptilian--made an emergency landing." Jack briefed him. "Their ship's been inop, but the repair has been made and they're just about ready to be on their way." He wouldn't bring up who got it running again. "We've got a translation and are talking to them, so that's why I want everyone out. And anyone _touches_ that ship, they're dealing with me personally." He all but growled the last threat.

Bast nodded solemnly. To Trent still standing by, he said, "Order the withdrawal."

Relief surged through him and Jack slumped against the vehicle frame with his eyes closed. "Thank you," he breathed.

"The order to stay away from the ship is going to kill Angela, you know," Bast said.

"She's here?" That surprised Jack, and he looked around. If she'd made the trip from Cardiff, she'd've been down there under the invisible spaceship with Toshiko.

"No, but she's already heard about the ship and was chafing at the bit to get her hands on it." Owen smirked. He was back with his medical kit and the scanner.

Jack suppressed a shudder when he saw the device and forced himself to refocus on the conversation. "I'll make it up to her somehow. She has a list from where I already owe her." He shrugged, and regretted it, getting a twinge of pain. "What're a few more entries?"

Owen opened the kit, watching him as if he were going to try again to get a look at his injuries. Instead, he asked the question that both he and Bast had been avoiding. "Gwen?"

"She's fine." Relief flooded both men's expressions. "Holding down the fort with the aliens. They like her," Jack explained.

"But she doesn't have any contact experience!" Bast bordered on incredulous.

"She does now," Jack shot back. He shoved himself up from his seat, minding the liftgate so he didn't hit his head. "Anyway, I have to get back down there."

"Now wait a minute, Jack," Bast protested and moved to block his path. Owen stopped Jack by the simple expedient of grabbing his forearm and pulling him back down to sit again.

It was true that, according to procedure, they had every obligation to keep him there until a neural scan had been performed to prove that he was who he claimed to be and wasn't under any alien influence or other form of compulsion. Conscientiousness and training wouldn't let Bast ignore opsec any more than they would let Jack in most cases. But Jack knew that, above operational security, Bast had the ulterior motive of getting Jack back into his role as director and the burden of command off his own shoulders.

Fortunately, Jack also knew which buttons to press with the man. He met Bast's hard stare with his own, assuring himself that this was about Gwen's safety and the success of the operation he had running down in the cave. And had nothing to do with his personal desire to avoid the neural scan if possible.

"To get here I had to evade one of the aliens--the one who didn't really trust me in the first place--and Gwenny has the translator, so I couldn't explain to him the danger I was trying to avert by running from him. By now, he's headed back to the others...and Gwen. And I can imagine he's pretty pissed off at me, and possibly the human race in general, right now.

"Chris, I _have_ to get back down there. Gwen could be in trouble."

Stepping back, Bast said, "All right, you can go..." Jack breathed a sigh of relief. "...in five minutes when the scan's done." Bast nodded to Owen, and Jack groaned his discontent, resigned to his fate.

oOoOo

Belanal's outraged voice echoed in the wide chamber, and Saalenu instantly rushed to her aid. With a shout, she hit the centre of Zhuluss's chest with force enough to hospitalise or kill a man. The big alien only staggered a little, but his bruising hold on Gwen's arms loosened, and she twisted against the weakened grip. Wriggling free at last, she darted away from the enraged Zhuluss, her heart racing, trembling in her panic.

Saalenu was between her and her aggressor, shouting at him, but Zhuluss was less than interested, not even looking at her. His malevolent stare was fixed on Gwen. Saalenu was an impediment, but Gwen doubted she had the strength to stop Zhuluss if he were determined. Belanal's command cut across the cavern, silencing Saalenu and pulling Zhuluss's seething focus away from Gwen.

_God, what the hell happened up there?_ She pushed down her panic when it became clear that Zhuluss wasn't going to take another swipe at her. Taking in the rest of the scene, she found that Doug and Mike had fled nearly to the edge of the room, their shock and horror evident even in the dwindling lamplight that reached them. Leaving a sizeable margin, she skirted the aliens' argument and went to them.

"What the fuck was that?" Mike stammered, his gaze never leaving the aliens.

"I wish I knew," she told him, her breathing only beginning to return to normal, her heart still fluttering rapidly in her chest. But she had an idea what was wrong. Zhuluss had said something about others arriving and Jack running off. That could only mean their fears had been answered and either the police or Torchwood had finally turned up. Jack must not have been able to reach them on his mobile; he never would have left Zhuluss otherwise. But did the ship get fixed?

Doug's hand on hers startled her. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

She shrugged off the enquiry. "Yeah, I'm okay, but I have to find out what's happened. Stay here."

Mike gawked at her. "Are you mad? That thing tried to kill you."

"He does have quite a temper. Stay here," she ordered again, "and stay out of the way." She probably was insane, she decided, but there was no sense in risking anyone else's life. "But, if he comes after me again, make for the surface."

Gwen didn't wait for a reaction. She turned and walked slowly back toward pool of lamplight where the aliens held their tense discussion. Zhuluss was calmer now, Belanal speaking intently to him, but when Saalenu caught sight of her, she moved to put herself between Gwen and Zhuluss. It seemed things were not quite settled yet, so Gwen halted, waiting at the edge of their little grouping, distractedly rubbing at the pain in her upper arms.

She missed the reassurance of having the translator and knowing what was going on. The tablet PC was still where she'd dropped it, very near where Zhuluss stood.

A final word from Belanal, and Zhuluss snorted disgustedly with a glance to Gwen. He didn't move, but some of the wariness disappeared from Saalenu's posture and she beckoned her forward.

Head held high, attempting to conceal her trepidation, Gwen went to pick up the translator. The transcript of the aliens' chat would tell her everything she wanted to know.

Except she couldn't read it.

The tablet PC's LCD had shattered, a huge glob of black oozing out from the crack in the plastic and obscuring most of the screen. She wasn't aware she'd made the woeful little noise until in her periphery she saw Saalenu's head snap around. Her narrow black gaze was alert as it glittered out of the shadows that covered her face. She fluted something questioning to Gwen as she approached.

Gwen raised the translator. "It broke. I can't read it," she lamented to the alien. But the half-second delayed echo of her words that had become so familiar was heartbreakingly absent. It wasn't translating her words either. Saalenu wailed mournfully, intuiting the problem from the device's silence.

Holding the computer up to her ear, she could hear the tiny mechanical sounds its internal workings made and felt a tiny vibration against the sensitive skin of her cheek. The hard drive and, hence, the language matrix might still be intact, but the translation programme wasn't running. And, without the display, she had no way to navigate the menus to get it running again.

She hoped Jack was having more luck outside.

oOoOo

"I'm going to hold you to the getting naked later, Jack," Owen muttered to him while he stripped sensor pads from their sterile packaging to place them at Jack's temples and the base of his skull. Jack knew what he was doing and was even thankful for his attempt to distract him from what was coming next. "For the record, I'm not happy letting you go without getting a look at your injuries, either." Jack just frowned at him, silently urging him to hurry up.

Finished connecting the probes, Owen was ready to trigger the scan.

Jack drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. "God, I hate this part."

"It really doesn't hurt if you relax," the medic chided lightly, but Jack heard the remorse in it.

"Easy for you to say." They both knew this wouldn't be painless for him. He grimaced as the pins and needles sensation split his skull. Sure, this part would be easier if he could relax, but he couldn't. He couldn't defeat his mind's reflexive, almost primal, need to fight against the process. It didn't help matters that something about the probe always made the hole in his memory throb like a toothache, either. He was certain that part wouldn't change whether he relaxed or not.

And the ride today was as bad as ever, as from under the stinging intensity of the maelstrom, the terribly familiar ache rose up out of the ragged void in his mind, the pain growing, consuming, until it was all he could do not to cry out. "Hold on, Jack." Owen's calm voice in his ears was a comfort. Tradition dictated that his next words would be... "A few more seconds."

The cessation of the onslaught was like hitting a brick wall. So much so that he was gasping from it, breath shuddering in his lungs, nerve endings on fire as the residual scanning energy dissipated. His jaw ached from the way he'd had it clenched. "It's over, Jack." Owen's tone was soothing. "It's over. I'm so sorry." His fingers were warm on Jack's neck, taking his carotid pulse, gently tugging the sticky pads from his skin.

Hardly feeling recovered and really wanting to curl up and, perhaps not die, but maybe pretend for a while, Jack was fully aware that precious time was slipping away and dutifully forced his eyes open. "There's gotta be a better way." He was a little dismayed but unsurprised by the way his voice shook.

"If there is, I hope they discover it soon," Owen said, his hand on Jack's shoulder, steadying and comforting. "You know I hate putting you through that. Nobody else reacts like you do."

Yeah, but nobody else's brain had been poked at by the Time Agency. Nor, as far as he knew, had anyone else on the team been exterminated by a Dalek death-squad and been resurrected from the dead.

Bast was looking down at him, concern also in his eyes. "All right, what else do you need from us?"

Struggling to pull himself together enough to think through the situation, he answered, "First, I need a flashlight." Zhuluss had the one they'd used to get to the surface. His headlamp and flashlight were in his pack still down in the cave. One of the men in grey fatigues, someone Jack didn't recognise, went to find him one.

"Get those guys out of the mine. Cordon off the area around the ship. No one in or out until it lifts off." Another thing came to his mind. "And call the North Wales Police--the Denbigh station. Tell 'em that their missing persons, Mike Westman and Doug Matheson, have been found. Do what you have to to keep them away from here and Westman and Matheson in our custody for the time being."

The soldier returned and presented him with a Maglite. "Thanks." Bast tried to give him back his gun, and Jack shook his head. "Hold on to it for me." Guilt stabbed at Jack as he remembered Mike Westman with it in his hand. He stripped off the gun-belt and passed it to Bast. "It's only caused trouble down there."

"Take this, anyway." The acting director unclipped the comm from his vest. "You should be able to contact us, even underground."

He saw it was one of the devices that Torchwood London had pieced together from Jathaa technology. Jack took it and clipped it to his belt. Someone had been thinking when they packed gear, had realised they might be conducting a subterranean search and that human radio technology wouldn't cut it in that event. "Great." He set off for the cave entrance.

oOoOo

They were on the move, Saalenu trying to explain what was happening as best she could with nearly non-existent English and gestures. Gwen took it all to mean that they were at long last headed for the ship. Jack must have done it, then. Even if he hadn't, it still made good sense that the safest place for the aliens right now was on their ship. If forces were mobilising on the surface, doubtless they'd be moving on to search the caves soon.

Zhuluss loaded the final crate onto the transport and took the lead. Still according him a wide berth, Gwen automatically stepped up to offer the slightly shaky Belanal her arm. He trilled his soft thanks to her.

She glanced over her shoulder at Mike and Doug. "Apparently, we're going. Stick close."

Their unlikely entourage progressed wordlessly, slowly, hampered by Belanal's injured leg. Yet even Zhuluss, who struck Gwen as the impatient sort at the best of times, seemed content maintain the pace Belanal set. She had to confess to a level of impatience that the aliens did not appear to share. She knew the two young men felt it, too, for a different reason. Theirs was explained by being held captive for three days. Hers had to do with the feeling that, at any moment, they could be beset by armed men who might decide to shoot first.

The feeling wasn't helped by the fact that she could swear she'd heard something in the tunnels behind them. The possibly imagined sound had given her pause, but she hadn't heard it again. Perhaps it _was_ her imagination, or some other natural noise distorted by the irregular shapes and surfaces of the caverns.

Gwen was also aware that the journey was wearing on Belanal. Though he made no comment, she could see the increasing strain in his posture and grimness in his countenance. The weight he was putting on her accumulated little by little. Gwen was glad to offer as much assistance as she could, but eventually the big alien would need more help than she'd be able to give. As it was, she was tiring quickly. The decision to leave behind her and Jack's packs' non-essential contents had been a very good one that she was grateful for. Essentially, only the defunct translator and the spectrographic scanner had made the cut. She'd kept her torch and the small medical kit in to ward off Murphy.

Belanal took a faltering step then, nearly falling but for Gwen's support and Saalenu's quick reaction. Together she and Saalenu eased him down to rest on the ground against the passage wall. She dropped to the rock floor beside him, putting a comforting hand on his when he made an apologetic wuffling noise. "Not your fault," she assured him, knowing her sentiment would be conveyed by her tone and touch not her words.

Zhuluss spoke then, expressing something garnering agreement from Belanal and Saalenu. He started to move off with the equipment transport. She guessed that he would go ahead to get the crates loaded while they rested with Belanal.

Catching Saalenu's eye, Gwen gestured to Mike and Doug and then in the direction Zhuluss had headed in. She knew from her earlier trip with Saalenu that they had to be close to the cave mouth. It was worth a try to see if the cavers could follow Zhuluss out.

Saalenu called to Zhuluss to stay his departure. A momentary exchange with Belanal, and the elder shrugged his consent.

Gwen got to her feet, pulling the handcuff key from her pocket. She'd have to trust that the two young men wouldn't be able to cause too much trouble before the aliens were safely away, and that Zhuluss wouldn't lose his temper with them in the meantime. Unlocking the cuffs, she instructed, "Follow Zhuluss to the surface. Give him his space, but don't lag, and don't do anything stupid to upset him. Understand?" Both men nodded solemnly, giving Zhuluss wary looks.

"What about you?" Mike asked.

She shook her head. "I'm staying. If you come across Jack, let him know the situation." A few yards away, Zhuluss was getting testy about having to wait. "Best get going, then."

Before turning away, Doug put out a hand to her to grasp hers briefly. "Thank you."

Gwen smiled her acceptance, telling him to go before their escort lost any more patience.

Close to ten minutes later, Gwen's eyes jerked open. The probably imagined sound behind them wasn't imagined this time. Voices, muffled by distance and distortion, but assuredly voices. If she had to guess, they were in the large cavern already. Saalenu was nervous, but then so was she. Time to go.

There was nowhere to hide here, so their best option was still forward to the ship. Between them, Gwen and Saalenu got Belanal to his feet again. One on either side, they supported his weight, adding only a tiny modicum of speed to their previously laborious pace.

If they got closer, Gwen knew she'd have to leave Saalenu to help Belanal and intercept the humans coming up behind them. She wouldn't let them come to harm.

A burst of staticy radio-chatter from the passage in front of them chilled her insides. Whoever was coming at them from that direction was still some distance away, but much closer than the others.

Their escape route was blocked; they were trapped.

There was nothing for it. She'd have to go and stop the intruder approaching from the cave entrance. Motioning for her two companions to stay where they were and keep quiet, she went to meet their visitor. Gwen switched on the headlamp she'd donned but hadn't had cause to use as Saalenu turned off her own lamp to mask their presence.

She followed the passage's twisting course for several yards until she was sure the aliens were well out of sight. "Hello?" she called out when she saw the halo of torchlight illuminating the tunnel before her. The one thing she didn't want to do was come out of the dark and startle an armed individual. It was a really good way to court the risk of being shot.

A very familiar voice responded to her challenge. "Hello yourself, gorgeous."

"Jack!"

He grinned, but it was a little bit brittle. Many people wouldn't see through the show he was giving her, but she could, and she'd wager that whatever ordeal he'd met on the surface wasn't as easy to handle as he'd tell her. "I knew you'd miss me," Jack pronounced. He shone his light into the tunnel behind her. "What did you do with our friends? Doug told me you still had Saalenu and Belanal with you."

She gestured back the way she'd come, and he followed. "Thought they should stay out of sight until I found out who was coming."

Jack nodded. His bright grin turned to something wry and vaguely contemplative as he flirted. "Of course, Doug also said something about handcuffs... Always did love a woman who knew her way around a set of handcuffs."

The comm in his hand squawked and let out a spate of hissing static, interrupting him. Jack halted, sticking his torch under his arm and smacking the black handheld against the palm of his hand. It rewarded him with another static-filled squawk and fell silent. "Why was London stealing comm tech from people who primarily use pictures to communicate, anyway?" he complained rhetorically. "The Jathaa know nothing about voice comms."

"Jack," Gwen said, calling his attention back to the situation, "someone's in the tunnel coming this way."

"Yeah, I just heard." He gestured with the comm. "That'd be our guys who apparently didn't get the message to pull out. Probably--surprise--a bad comm." He tucked his away into the pocket of his jacket.

Seeing Saalenu and Belanal, he put on a smile. "Hi, guys." Both aliens relaxed visibly when they recognised him. "Been keeping my girl out of trouble for me?" He winked to Gwen. "All right, Gwen, I think you'd best go on ahead with Belanal and Saalenu. Should be smooth sailing from here. Ship's powered and ready. The way's clear and will stay clear as long as everyone up top follows orders. I'll go stall our boys in the tunnel.

"When you get them home safe, if I haven't joined you already, Bast's got the command vehicle just over the hill from the cave mouth."

"Okay, thanks. Good luck," she said returning to Belanal's side, and Jack bid Saalenu and Belanal farewell before he disappeared into the darkness.

The remainder of the journey was still painfully slow, but she felt better knowing Jack was running interference.

The daylight pouring in through the opening had to count as one of the loveliest things she'd ever seen. When they arrived, Zhuluss was waiting for them, keeping watch over the area leading up to the cave. As Jack had promised, there was no sign of life anywhere within view.

Stopping near the cave exit, Belanal took his hand from her arm and spoke softly to her, stroking her hand lightly between his. A goodbye? Gwen was confused. They hadn't reached the ship. It couldn't be goodbye quite yet.

Saalenu was next, her farewell and thanks coming as a somewhat careful embrace as she took special care not to crush Gwen. She suddenly didn't know what to say. Though it didn't really matter, did it? Her words wouldn't mean anything to them just as theirs didn't to her. But the sentiment came through. That was what really mattered. She was happy that they were finally able to resume their journey, that they hadn't run into the worst that her race could offer in the interim, but she was just the slightest bit sad to see them go.

When Saalenu let her go, Zhuluss had joined them. To Gwen's surprise, he put his huge hand out, she guessed, in apology. She put her hand in his for a moment and smiled, hoping to show him that she'd forgiven him. With a concise nod, he stepped back a little.

When it was clear she didn't understand what was happening, Saalenu guided Gwen to stand apart from them. Still bewildered by the ritual, Gwen stayed where she'd been put, and was astonished when, in a flash of white light, her friends vanished.

She was still agape half a minute later when Jack's arm settled around her shoulders. "Teleport's a neat trick, isn't it?" His smile was easy. She could imagine he'd seen green-scaled aliens disappear into the ether a thousand times before. "It's going to disappoint the hell out of everyone up top, though, that they didn't get to see the aliens."

The mention of others made her look behind them. Where had the team gone? Jack replied to the implied question. "Oh, I sent them back to secure things until we get the clean-up team in there. Figured it'd keep 'em busy until our friends got out." His arm around her tightened in a quick one-armed hug before he grabbed her hand. "C'mon, let's go see them off. Though, invisible spaceship--probably won't be that impressive a sight," he conceded. "But, if you're into such things, I'm betting the sound of the engines alone will be worth the ticket price."

The import, if not quite the reality, of what she and Jack had accomplished set in, suffusing her with a warm glow of satisfaction as he dragged her into the crisp air of a bright Sunday. Just the two of them had averted something that could so easily have turned bloody. She remembered then why she'd been drawn to police work and understood why Jack was so interested in adding new blood to Torchwood's ranks. In the organisation's historical records, reports where visitors to Earth--peaceful or otherwise--met with humanity and actually left the planet were exceedingly rare. Its aim until the recent past had been to capture and conquer, bringing down and raiding passing ships for their technology. She was glad to be part of a new legacy.

oOoOo

Dressed and rested, and feeling human once again, Jack balanced the box and the bottles on the ornately-carved hall table conveniently located near her door, and knocked.

Gwen answered a few seconds later. "Jack." She backed up a few steps to let him in.

Instead, he propped himself against the doorframe. "Listen, I have this lead on a really great Thai place if you're interested." Her negative reaction was slight--her nose wrinkled a little at the suggestion--and exactly as he expected. He continued blithely. "And, if I'm not mistaken, I think somewhere along the line yesterday I promised you an expense-account dinner."

"Thank you, but--"

"But you're more the pizza and beer sort of girl." He cut her off with a grin. He retrieved the six-pack from the table and handed it to her, grabbing the pizza box. "Good thing I guessed that. Besides, we don't have a car yet."

She favoured him with a laugh and pointed him in the direction of the writing desk at one side of the cosy room to set down the pizza. As she straightened the room a bit, shoving her bag and a small pile of clothing into the corner, Jack found a seat on the still-made half of the bed, his back against the headboard. From the look of things, she, like he, had caught a shower and a few hours sleep since Owen had dropped them off at the bed and breakfast in Llangynhafal.

She turned and he saw the makings of a large, livid bruise showing beneath the sleeve of her t-shirt. "Zhuluss do that? He seemed the quick-tempered type."

Gwen looked confused for an instant before realising what he referred to. She glanced at her arm. "Yeah, when he came back down after you'd run off on him. Shook me around a bit."

"I'm really sorry about that."

She dismissed the apology with a shake of her head. "You did what you had to. I'm okay. It all worked out, and they're safe and away back into space. And your ribs?"

"Fine. Owen wouldn't leave me alone until he'd had a look. You know, he had me half-naked and didn't even have the decency to give me the impression that his interest wasn't entirely professional."

Gwen feigned a sympathetic look for him. "Oh, you poor thing."

"Gave me something to knock the edges off the pain, too. Course it means it's probably safer if you drive us back tomorrow." The edges of the pain weren't the only edges he'd lost to the drug; if he tried to concentrate, he bumped into the almost euphoric haze that deadened the corners of his consciousness.

"They'll drop off a car for us later when things are cleared up at the mine," he informed her. Standard sanitisation procedures called for the mine and surrounding area to be thoroughly searched and any sign of extraterrestrial presence removed. Fortunately that was something the team could do by themselves while he and Gwen recovered from the last thirty hours.

"Oh, and Doug and Mike have been debriefed and sent home. After talking with them, Bast doesn't anticipate any problems with either of them keeping their mouths shut about what they've seen."

He had the niggling feeling he was forgetting something. He was, he realised when Gwen picked up one of the beer bottles and tapped the cap with her nail as she sought a way to open it. Slipping the borrowed bottle wrench from his back pocket, he handed it to her, and she opened two bottles.

"Hmm, always prepared. Boy Scout?" she said, offering him one. Owen had had his usual grave warnings about alcohol and the painkillers he'd given him, but Jack intended to ignore him. He figured that, if a Dalek didn't do the job, then a beer on top of a mild narcotic didn't stand a chance. And if he did fall asleep right here on Gwen's bed--well, she wasn't the type to molest him too badly. Not that he'd mind.

"Something like that." She opened her mouth to say something in response, but thought better of it and stopped. "What?" he asked, expecting it was an aborted jibe about his proclivities.

She shook her head. "Back in the cave--promised I wouldn't pry, didn't I?"

"No, you didn't. You promised to understand when I told you to leave off." She'd also made another offer, an offer to be a friend and to listen if he wanted. He took a sip from his bottle, making a decision. "What was the question?"

"The question? That implies there was only one. And, my dear _Captain_ Harkness, I've got nothing but questions..." The tone was lightly teasing, but it was clear she meant every word.

"That you think I won't answer. Try me."

She paused, fleeting incredulity on her face before the look turned wilful, almost mischievous. Jack could see her mind at work; she was auditioning the questions she had on her list and picking a doozy, he was sure. He wasn't disappointed as her query went right for the throat.

"I'm pretty sure there's no one else on this planet--no one at UNIT, not even anyone else at Torchwood--that steps right up to an alien spaceship engine without batting an eye. Uses an alien toolkit filled with stuff that it would take Toshiko and Angela months, if not years, to even identify, again, with absolutely no fuss. No one else that talks to--_flirts with_--aliens like they're any random human off the street. But _you_ do.

"And I have to ask myself, how does someone acquire that particular brand of knowledge and experience?" She regarded him for a moment, seeming to look right through him. "You've seen all of it before, haven't you--aliens and spaceships?"

"Yeah."

He watched her as she took a long drink, the gears turning, digesting the answer and working out what to ask next. "What about yesterday on the moor? You talked about the future like you'd seen it too."

He gave her an indulgent smile. "Tell you what. How about I tell you a long and complicated--and probably unbelievable--story about a guy from the fifty-first century? A cop--of a sort--betrayed by the agency he believed in and turned criminal, redeemed and turned companion to a myth and a shopgirl. A guy who fell in love with a way of life, and a ship, and maybe--just maybe--fell a little bit for the people he shared them with, too. But in the end, he was left behind. Whether he was betrayed again or simply forgotten--some other reason--he won't know until he catches up with the myth again."

Her expression was thoughtful as she picked up the pizza box and climbed onto the bed to sit with him. "And does our protagonist think he will catch up?" she asked, lightly nudging his shoulder with hers and picking a slice out of the box.

Jack grinned then. "Anything's possible. But, yeah, he thinks he'll see his myth again some day." And he was certain that would be an interesting story in itself.


End file.
